[pmwiki-users] Converting WikiStyle shortcuts to CSS classes

[Russell Bailey]

The main weakness of my Rich Text Editor's current implementation is 
WikiStyles.  The problem is that,  while I can preserve the effects of 
the styles just fine,  saving them back to their original markup gets 
complicated.  For example,  if I do %define=box block bgcolor=#ddddff%, 
then apply it to several pieces of text on a page, those pieces of text 
end up with %backgroundcolor=#ddddff% on each of them.  The same thing 
happens with built-in (or otherwise programmatically defined) styles-  I 
can get the effect,  but not the name.

I think the most sensible way to get around this is to transform 
WikiStyles into the thing they act like-  CSS classes.  I'm figuring 
that,  at the end of markup generation,  I'd transform the contents of 
$WikiStyles to classes and store them in $HTMLStylesFmt['wikistyles'].

I have a few questions:

* Is there a reason not to do this?  Previously,  Pm has said there 
wasn't,  but I want to make sure nobody's run into one.

* Has anyone played with rewriting the WikiStyle engine before?  Have 
you documented any design or quirks?

* Has anyone done a list of the variables used inside by and inside 
ApplyStyles()?

All in all,  it doesn't look like too big a job,  and I imagine the 
results could be useful in other contexts.  Any comments or help would 
be appreciated.

Best,

Russell