[Pmwiki-users] Re: [[include: ... ]] part of a page

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Tue May 4 08:00:37 CDT 2004


On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 06:34:05PM -0700, Steven Leite wrote:
> I agree, if it's superceeded by [[include:]], it doesn't make sense to
> separate it.
> One might argue that even the [[include:]] is "extra functionality that
> is seldome used",
> but that's really just one opinion (mine!), but I think JR said it best:
> 
> JR>"A model should be as simple as possible, but no simpler."
> 
> and
> 
> JR> My experience is that people use a subset of the available
> JR> markup, but different people use different subsets. One
> JR> person's core feature is another's gratuitous extension.

Just to add my thoughts on this--I generally don't have a problem with 
adding markup or functions that are seldom used, as long as (1) there's a 
clearly defined need for the feature somewhere (PmWikiPhilosophy #3), and 
(2) the existence of the feature isn't likely to pose a barrier to 
new authors encountering it for the first time (PmWikiPhilosophy #1).

In the case of [[include:SomePage]], I suspect that an author encountering 
it for the first time is likely to say "oh, I get it" without having to 
read the documentation.  For the extended version ([[include:SomePage#a#b]])
it's less obvious what is happening exactly, but such statements are 
likely to be set apart from other text and so an author won't feel 
compelled to understand it before being able to modify the document.

In contrast, markups that are inline with text, contain odd characters,
or otherwise make the markup text look less like what is displayed on
output will have a tendency to alienate potential authors (violating
PmWikiPhilosophy #1).

Pm



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