[Pmwiki-users] Re: Pmwiki new version

[John Rankin]

On Wednesday, 9 June 2004 12:23 PM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:

>The points that it looks like inline markup and awkward to type 
>have validity, though.  Perhaps awkwardness is not a big problem
>since (I think) directives tend to occur in pages much less frequently 
>than other markups.  

A point which your later paragraph rather undermines. This may
get a *lot* of use.

As far as it looking like inline markup--somehow
>[:...:] just "felt" right when I created it, and I actually felt the
>fact that it shared the brackets with other markups is a bit of an
>advantage, even though it's not "inline".
>
>(And to me [...] looks far more "inline" than [:...:] does.)
>
>Note that I've also been intending to use [:...:] or something like
>it for things that generate text, e.g.  [:toc pagename:],  
>[:search text:],  [:attachlist:], as well as additional things like
>[:table:], [:cell:], [:cellnr:], [:div:], [:nocache:], [:cloak:], etc.
>There may be an argument to be made that some of these represent
>directives, others are properties, and since others generate content, 
>and since they do different things they should have a different markup
>syntax.  However, I think that authors will not care about these
>distinctions, and will tend to focus on the word (e.g., "noheader", 
>"table", "search") as the distinguishing characteristic and not the
>characters used to surround it--indeed authors will get annoyed if they
>have to remember the "type" of each directive and the punctuation that
>goes along with it.

yup.

>...
>I'm very open to alternatives to [:...:].  Here's a few ideas just off
>the top of my head...
>    {:directive param:}     (not too good...looks like a pair of smileys)

     {{directive param}}     cf {$Group}
     $$directive param$$     (D for directive)
     ((directive param))     (although some wikis use this for links)
     //directive param//

>    #:directive param:#
>    #!directive param!#     
>    #!directive param       (always at the beginning of a line)

     One of the benefits of [[link syntax]] is that it's easy to
     type -- repeating characters is a good thing (cf @@, '', %%, ||)

     I'd prefer to see repeating characters unless there's a good 
     reason not to -- eg {{directive param}} or ((directive param))

>
>Pm
>


-- 
JR
--
John Rankin