[pmwiki-users] Feature request: Action lists in skins

[Joachim Durchholz]

Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

 > I'll also note that Scott's interpretation above is certainly *not*
 > Joachim's interpretation -- the actions would have to go into a PHP
 > array of some sort in order for it to be shared across skins.

Indeed. Thanks for pointing that out.

> On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 04:58:29PM -0500, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
> 
>><!--function:ActionList 
>>	sep="~" wrapbegin="((" wrapend="))"
>>	actions="edit,print,diff"
>>	print_text="print this page"
>>	diff_text="page history"
>>-->
>>
>>where the text for the action is just the action itself unless no
>>action_text is specified.
>>
>>So far, writing this email has made me lean more towards Pm's side of
>>the continuum. I've just added so many knobs to this feature that I
>>might as well have coded the HTML myself. 
> 
> ... and since you have to know a fair bit about HTML anyway to
> have gotten this far, basically what we've accomplished is add a 
> lot of complexity for no benefit to an admin who is trying to create a
> simple skin.  I.e., simple things are no longer simple.
 > But
> it's still a fair amount of extra complexity, even for simple skins.

I simply don't get it. What the heck is complicated about

   <!--ActionList-->

???

> And we still haven't handled extra attributes to the actions,
> such as opening in another window (printable view or uploads), or
> perhaps adding a template argument to an edit link.

Again, I don't get it. I specifically asked exception for *not* 
addressing that issue for now. I don't know whether I have an answer to 
that. I simply wanted to know whether <!--ActionList--> is OK or not.

>>And just to compare:
>>
>><a href='$PageUrl?action=print'>$[Printable View]</a>
>><a href='$PageUrl?action=diff'>$[Page History]</a>
>><a href='$PageUrl?action=edit'>$[Edit Page]</a>
> 
> This is definitely more straightforward.

What? Three lines of HTML interspersed with PHP conventions, with two 
different syntactic conventions that must be followed to a single 
character, is "more straightforward" than a single 
<!--function:ActionList-->???

It's just the opposite. Separation of concerns.

*Skin writers* live in the skin syntax. They already know about 
<!--wiki:...--> and <!--function:...-->, dealing with 
<!--function:ActionList...--> should be no news to them.
If they wish to be fancy about the action list, they insert 
<!--function:ActionSeparator ...-->. If they want to be *really* fancy, 
they may need ActionWrapper.

*Recipe writers* deal with the contents for the action list. They live 
in the PHP world, so it's no great deal for them to provide an array like
   'action' => 'print',
   'name' => 'Printable View',
   'attributes' => 'target='_blank'
so that the ActionList function can apply i18n to the 'name' attribute 
and generate the proper action list HTML.

> More to the point, consider how we would generate the equivalent of:
> 
>     <a href='$ScriptUrl/$Group/RecentChanges'>$[Recent Changes]</a>
>     <a target='_blank' href='$PageUrl?action=print'>$[Printable View]</a>
>     <a target='_blank' href='$PageUrl?action=upload'>$[Attachments]</a>
>     <a href='$PageUrl?action=diff'>$[Page History]</a>
>     <a href='$PageUrl?action=edit'>$[Edit Page]</a>

*sigh* yeah, I know. Somehow it seems nobody read that I consciously 
skipped the issue in my last post.
Anyway. Dealt with in the last paragraph.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well... now that I'm thinking about it...
It seems as if I'm quite unsuccessful at communicating here. I've been 
trying to contribute that way, but I'm obviously a miserable failure in 
this regard.
Seeing that I've been wasting considerable amounts of my and your time 
with my proposals, I have decided to drop out of PmWiki development and 
demote myself to "normal PmWiki admin" status.

Regards,
Jo