[pmwiki-users] Proposed Default Stylesheet (pmwiki.css)

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Fri Feb 17 15:32:57 CST 2006


[I'm just now catching up on this thread with a few quick comments here
and there... --Pm]

On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 12:55:54PM -0700, H. Fox wrote:
> On 2/16/06, Joachim Durchholz <jo at durchholz.org> wrote:
> > Hmm... I must have missed that discussion.
> > The current way to doing things is OK if everything in the sidebar is a
> > link. Unfortunately, that breaks down horribly if the sidebar is a
> > mixture of link and non-link stuff.
>
> I see what you mean, but I still think most people would prefer the
> default style -- at the expense of some usability -- for purely
> aesthetic reasons.

I agree that it doesn't quite work if the sidebar is a mixture of
links and non-links.  Since the default distribution tends to have
mostly links (and I expect most sites to use it that way) it seems to 
work better without the underlines, which otherwise generate "too much
ink" on the page.

If we can come up with something "in between", that would be good.

> > Another reason to not give a fixed size is that it should look well on
> > minority browsers, too. Window's idea of 10pt deviates considerably from
> > what a Mac does (because they use different assumptions about screen
> > resolution).
> 
> That has implications for the entire stylesheet.
> 
> Hopefully someone out there with a Mac will report in.

I have a Browsercam account that I can use to test different skins
under Mac browsers; but I need to see if I can find a good 
way to get the images out to the rest of you to view.  Currently
I have to download them and stick them in a page or server somewhere,
which isn't entirely convenient.

> > 'ex' would probably be a better unit than 'em'. It's supposed to measure
> > vertical space (this would differ for fonts with a different aspect ratio).
> 
> I've seen far more usage of 'em', and I've read things that convinced
> me 'em' is better.
> 
> Anyone else know about this?

Somewhere in the back of my mind I have the impression that for some time
'ex' wasn't implemented in many browsers.  But I could be wrong there.

However, there's a very interesting article that recommends 'ex' units
for all units at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Em_units_versus_ex_units .

> > > If something like this were enabled on pmwiki.org there would need to
> > > be a *bunch* of preformatted code fix-up.  :-)
> >
> > pmwiki.org has the SetSkin recipe enabled, so PM could install a skin
> > with such a change, and people with an interest in doing the fix-up
> > could go through the site and check.
> 
> Good idea.

What sort of fix-ups are you envisioning as being necessary?  I
didn't follow everything discussed there...

> > Probably PmWiki should each any blank lines after headers.
> > Some rule like "If a line starts with !, eat any blank lines after it",
> > before line splitting is done (yes it's ugly).
> 
> Good idea.  If authors are going to be denied control over whitespace
> below headings, then that seems like the way to do it.

I wasn't intending to imply that authors should be denied
control over whitespace below headings -- I was just meaning to
indicate that it introduce a subtle difference that authors
might not catch.  In general I'm not a fan of subtle differences
that are easily overlooked -- if there's a difference, it
ought to be an obvious one.  :-)

Personally, I follow my "!!heading" lines by a blank line
because I think it's more like what I would expect in
messages.  In email I'll often see

    Heading

    blah blah blah
    blah blah blah

but rarely

    Heading
    blah blah blah
    blah blah blah

Ultimately  I don't think PmWiki should automatically eat blank 
lines after headings.  Better is to use CSS to style those blank
lines as we want:

    h1 + p.vspace { margin-top: ...  }

(Unfortunately, IE 6 doesn't support the CSS "+" selector yet.)

Pm




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