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

Jonathan Scott Duff duff at pobox.com
Thu Apr 7 09:49:59 CDT 2005


On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 10:48:43AM +0200, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> >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. 

Mea culpa. I saw your exception but then promptly forgot about it when
my brain switched into storm mode.

> 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.

Neither should HTML, $[tranlations], or $Variables.

> 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.

This is where I have trouble with your proposal I guess. I can't see how
they would not want to be fancy in almost every case. You're advocating
a standard content and look for the "actions" with a couple of knobs to
modify the look. But skin designers are intimately concerned with the
look and not everyone will agree on the content; two knobs isn't going
to be enough IMHO.

> 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.

Hey, no way!   I think you were communicating just fine, it's just
that some of us (okay, maybe just me) went a little off the deep end
in thinking about what you were trying to achieve.

> 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.

I don't think you've wasted anybody's time. I think "trial by fire"
discussions like this are great for vetting ideas. If the idea survives,
it makes pmwiki better which is good for all of us. If the idea doesn't
survive, then the proposer sees what modifications he/she needs to make
for the next round, and maybe we get a better idea out of it.

-Scott
-- 
Jonathan Scott Duff
duff at pobox.com



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