[pmwiki-users] floating box on the right

[John Rankin]

On Thursday, 24 March 2005 1:21 PM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
>We might also consider a WikiStyle syntax of
>
>   %note bgcolor=blue% {=sticky note=}
>
>where "note" is defined in such a way that the wiki style applies only
>to sticky notes.  This would also make possible things like %bluenote% 
>{=here's a blue stickynote=}.
>
>However, after looking at the implementations, I notice that we can 
>already do stickynotes using WikiStyles, as in:
>
>   %stickynote% This is a sticky note %%
>
>See a demonstration of this at http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Test/StickyNotes.
>This has the advantage of not requiring any additional syntax, as well
>as allowing wiki markup (including links) in the middle of the note.  
>One can also add to the note styling, as in:
>
>   %stickynote bgcolor=yellow% This is a yellow sticky note %%
>
Um, yes and no... (btw {=stick notes=} of course allow wiki markup)

I guess it comes down to whether one perfers semantic markup or
stylistic markup. Being a bit of a purist, my preference is:

- separate content from presentation

- use semantic markup to describe content

I haven't got to it yet, but I foresee problems with the
wiki->pdf project when it comes to dealing with %style% 
markup because it seems to me to be very web-centric.

I worry that we will find all the myriad variations of
%style% just too hard to deal with and we end up ignoring
the lot of them and stripping them from the printed form!

>Way cool.  Should we consider a %stickynote% style for the core?
>(We might want a different name.)

Well if it were up to me, whenever pmwiki gains a new semantic
style, such as %stickynote%, we'd define an alternate semantic
markup, like {=sticky note=}. But that's just me -- I think that
%style% is a bad name; in this case we are describing a piece
of text as a sticky note, which could be rendered in a number of
ways without changing its meaning. To me, the right thing to do is
take the time to develop a good markup, not add another style.

In fact, I think %style% markup is really used for 2 quite
different purposes:

- to do casual styling of text

- to extend wiki markup and add new meaning to page content,
  which we happen to represent stylistically, rather than with
  markup characters

So what about introducing a new markup for the latter semantic
purpose?

But I'm probably out of step on this...


-- 
JR
--
John Rankin