simple tables... WAS Re: [pmwiki-users] bug in [@ @]?

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Sat, Aug 13, 2005 at 03:13:14PM -0400, Radu wrote:
> At 12:54 AM 8/13/2005, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> >On Sat, Aug 13, 2005 at 12:19:45AM -0400, Radu wrote:
> >> If you look at
> >> http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/BasicEditing#inline
> >> , in the second example, 'styling' is a link, but its markup was not
> >> made visible by [@ @].
> >
> >If you're asking about the "What to type" column, the 'styling'
> >doesn't have the link markup around it, so it's not appearing.
> 
> Ah, yes. So why did you give up the markup directive in favor of this 
> weird thing with advanced tables? Advanced tables strike me as very 
> combersome tu use, there's no way to figure out any sort of 
> horizontal relationship.

I didn't give up the (:markup:) directive in general -- only for this
particular page.  And it's not carved in stone yet.  

My thinking on this is that the BasicEditing page is likely to 
be *the* page that new authors will look at first, and so I think 
it's extremely important that this one page be as clear and easy to 
_read_ as possible, even if that makes the markup a little more 
cumbersome.  But I wasn't intending to abandon the use (:markup:) 
on other pages, or try to get other pages to switch to the same layout.
Consistency is often a good thing, but it can also be a hobgoblin
at times -- sometimes we have to recognize when it's time to go outside
the guidelines.

> The next phase I'm planning is to use local 'variables' to declare 
> the content of cells, then use them to declare the table layout, as such:
> 
> ||{style declarations}
> ||a1 Some title
> ||b2 More text
> ||b3 other text
> ||c=2 !a1! ||
> ||b2 || b3||
> 
> The need comes from one of my projects that requires some rather 
> complex tables (as a way to succintly map some examples for 
> multidimensional linguistic variables to the 2D that a (printed) page 
> affords)

Usually when it's time to implement complex or nested tables,
I just recommend enabling the HTML table markups directly in
the page markup, rather than try to come up with a new markup
for it or extend the existing ones to do everything.  The
simple table markups are intended to be exactly that -- simple,
and to make it possible to write

    ||! Name   ||! Grade ||
    ||Patrick  ||    A   ||
    ||Roberta  ||    C   ||

instead of

    <table><tr><th>Name</th><th>Grade</th></tr>
    <tr><td>Patrick</td><td align='center'>A</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Roberta</td><td align='center'>C</td></tr>
    </table>

I know which one *I* prefer to write.  :-) :-)  But if 
interpreting the table markup means requires knowing lots 
of codes or having something that doesn't look like its
output, then I'd prefer to go with the table markup standard
that everyone else is using.

Pm