[Pmwiki-users] Re: Skins

Christian Ridderström chr
Sun Feb 22 13:12:04 CST 2004


On Sun, 22 Feb 2004, Steven Leite wrote:

> This is a reply to Pm's invitation for comments about a new template layout.
> 
> > I'd really like to invite less confusion, not more.  And as you
> > correctly point out, increasing the number of locations to place things
> > increases confusion (which is why I've argued for fewer predefined
> > directories, not more).

> > It is *extremely important* to the overall success of PmWiki that the
> > layouts be easy to customize, and the comments you all are sending are
> > very important to me, because what I'm hearing is that this is not
> > currently the case.

<joke>I played Civilization (the board game!) today --- I won :-) --- so I 
just have to ask: Is the plan to have PmWiki take over the "world"? ;-)
</joke>

Ok, seriously. What is the target "audience" for PmWiki, i.e. how "savvy" 
are the administrators (and users?) supposed to be? Is it ok to require 
for them to know PhP? Or just some basic programming skills?

(For the record, I didn't know Php when I started with PmWiki, but since 
it was pretty similar to other functional programming languages the 
barrier wasn't exactly high. Perhaps having a page explaining some 
"trivial" php-related details could be useful? Or give links to a good 
place for a novice to read up about php --- all of this assumes that some 
kind of php-knowledeged is needed for fiddling with pmwiki)


> -----
> 
> SOME QUICK COMMENTS ABOUT POTENTIAL REASONS FOR DIFFICULTIES
> 
> >So, help me out here, folks.  I'm thinking the
> >difficulties must stem from one or more of:
> 
> >  - limitations of CSS as a layout language
> 
> Not really.  I've never consider (and still don't) CSS to be a layout
> languange.

Someone recently posted this link:
   http://www.westciv.com/style_master/academy/positioning_tutorial/index.html

it was very useful to me, and implicitly explain why CSS2 is useful for 
layout design, i.e. how we can use it to place elements at different 
positions of a page.

>  I use CSS for doing cross-website (global) changes to
> font-style, sizes and colors.  I don't use it for anything else.  (Since
> using PmWiki, I have learned CSS can be used for much more, but that's
> beside the point)
> 
> >  - lack of familiarity with CSS-based layouts
> 
> Yeah, I guess that might be my problem, but I don't belive CSS-based layouts
> are that commonly used yet (by typical html coders), nor do I feel the need
> to learn how when I'm perfectly happy with my table layouts.  CSS Layouts
> should be optional. (I say css layouts, not styles.  css Styles are a good
> thing.)

CSS is definitely getting more common... Some versions of MS Outlook now
practically require that you as the recipient understand CSS, but don't
get me started on that...

Anyway, IIRC, the previous link also gives reasons for why it's better to 
use CSS for layout than tables.

> >  - separation of content generation ($...Fmt variables in .php scripts)
>
> I don't even understand what that means. I especially don't understand the
> $Fmt variables.  I think the $Fmt part confuses me.  Maybe if they were
> named more simply.  Are these arrays?  Maybe that's what's confusing me.


Wild idea: How about we implement the $Fmt variables as instances of a 
class? Then we can give the objects a more clearly defined interface.
> 
> 
> >  - lack of documentation
> 
This was the main problem for me, OTOH, I was converting from 0.5.27 to a 
beta version.


> Plus, anybody who's taken the time to ask a question in the mailing list
> surely has not regretted it.  Answer's usually come in hours rather than
> days.

I agree :-)

> >  - PmWiki just trying to provide too much in a layout structure

I'm slighly worried that we are aiming for too much capability in PmWiki 
at the moment. How do this layout issue relate your principles Patrick?

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m                           http://www.md.kth.se/~chr





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