[pmwiki-users] Request for ideas -- edit page improvements

[John Rankin]

On Tuesday, 1 February 2005 7:20 AM, Jonathan Scott Duff <duff at pobox.com> wrote:
>On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 06:56:37PM +0100, Pierre Rouzeau wrote:
>> without having Wysiwyg table support, it is possible to have a more 
>> friendly system, say a form ask you first column and rows number, and 
>> then open a new HTML form with input fields in the same disposition as 
>> the table cells. For existing table, the mouse pointer set on any part 
>> of the table, a button can reopen the table in its interactive form.
>> 
>> I don't think this will be utterly complex. I think i have seen 
>> something like that somewhere, but i am not able to track it
>back.
>
>Here's an another idea for "better table support" (I'm still not sure
>what that really means): Have an icon that looks like a table. The user
>clicks on it and a form appears asking for the number of rows/columns.
>When they submit the form, the proper markup appears in the edit box and
>a little graphic table appears on the page with the same number of
>rows/columns as the user specified. When the user clicks on a cell in
>the little graphic, the cursor is moved to the appropriate place in the
>edit box.
>
>Also, if you wanted to get really fancy, clicking on the lines that
>define the cells within the table could cause them to toggle on/off so
>that you can create more complicated tables (i.e. colspan=3 kind of
>things)

I had thought along similar lines but <cough> rather simpler.

First use the standard edit form to create a table as part of a page.

A table on a displayed page gains an Edit Table link after it.

Clicking the link takes you to a form that has deconstructed the table.

Option A (simple version)

The form has:

Table format:  [                                ]

Table caption: [                                ]

Table body:    [  suitable text area            ]
               [                                ]
               [                                ]

Make title from first row [ ] column [ ] (check boxes)

(Save) (Preview) (Reset)

The text area could be forgiving, as it knows we are dealing with
a table:
- omit the opening and closing || on a line

- allow double <return>s between rows for editing clarity

Option B (advanced version)

Possibly for future enhancement:

- deconstruct the table body into table cells

- make each cell a scrolling text area

- provide a sub-form to:

   ( ) insert [ ] rows before ( ) after ( ) row (pick list of row numbers)

   ( ) insert [ ] cols before ( ) after ( ) col (pick list of col numbers)

   (Go)

I agree about avoiding gratuitous features. This should be done as a 
cookbook recipe.
-- 
JR
--
John Rankin