[Pmwiki-users] Re: Idea for extension of special list syntax

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Sat, Jan 22, 2005 at 05:21:39PM +0100, chr at home.se wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> 
> > > Do you still feel that way if we make it clear that it's the position of 
> > > the starting text of the element that the following text need to be 
> > > aligned with?  
> > 
> > Okay, I'll bite -- exactly how do we make it clear?  I.e., could you
> > write the text and examples that explain it?  ;-)
> 
> I'd be happy to write documentation (text/examples) if you afterwards try
> to come up with a a piece of .php-code that implements it. I know I'd be
> using that recipe on my sites - maybe this a good way to move forward?  

Yes, it probably is.

> The code would initially only have to handle items in levels one, two and
> three - I suspect that'd be the majority of the cases anyway.

It's pretty easy to make the code handle things at all levels.

> >     *      Level 1 item
> >            This is part of the level 1 item
> >     ** Level 2 item
> >     ** Level 2 item
> >        This is part of the level 2 item
> >            What is this?
> 
> The last line should be preformatted text...

As soon as we say it should be preformatted text the question will
come from some authors as to "why isn't it a continuation of the level 1
item"?  Half a feature is often more confusing and difficult to deal
with than none-at-all.

I'll concede that my example above is somewhat contrived and probably
doesn't occur in the real world.

> It doesn't solve the problem of continuing a previous item this way... but
> I think Neil is right about counting spaces being bad in this case.

Well, as you've pointed out a couple of times -- in the above we're
not really "counting spaces" -- we're just looking at alignment.  However,
for long lists that require scrolling in the edit textarea an author
might indeed be reduced to counting spaces.

Pm