[pmwiki-users] linebreaks and Creole

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 01:07:50PM -0600, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 16, 2007 at 05:58:51PM +0000, J. Meijer wrote:
> > I am talking mainly about defaults. The (:nolinebreaks:) is the 
> > pmwiki default. I think it would be cleaner to have this changed. 
> > [...]
> > So I challenge: what problem does automatic line-joining really 
> > solve? I may be able to challenge those that think it is required. 
> 
> This particular issue (linebreaks vs. nolinebreaks as default) has 
> been discussed _many_ times here in the past, with about equal numbers
> of people arguing for each side.  Proponents of each side have
> had extremely good and valid reasons for their position.

Just to add another data point to this discussion:  The 
WikiCreole markup standard had (:linebreaks:) as the default
behavior up to version 0.3 of the standard.  

However, Creole 0.4 appears to be **reversing** the standard
in this respect, so that line joining (i.e., (:nolinebreaks:) )
is now the default for Creole markup.  I think that's a pretty 
strong argument in favor of keeping PmWiki's existing 
"line-joining by default" behavior -- here we had a group
that was originally defaulting to linebreaks, but based on
experience has decided to switch.

The pros/cons that Creole considered in making this switch are 
at http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/ChangeLinebreakMarkupProposal .

I'm working on a Creole implementation for PmWiki now, to
be included as an option in the distribution.  I'm surprised
to see how closely Creole has now come to using PmWiki's existing
syntax (especially for things like links), so the additional
changes are really minor.  Indeed, the major implementation
obstacle I was facing was the need to treat linebreaks as 
linebreaks, but since Creole 0.4 reverses that requirement,
a Creole implementation is **much** simpler!

Pm