Re: [Phpwiki-talk] css classes, ids in markup

[John K. <jo...@ke...>]

At 21:42 +1300 13/10/05, Matt Brown wrote:
>On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 13:51 +0200, Joel Uckelman wrote:
>>  {{foo #bar: Here is some text of class foo with id bar.}}
>>
>>would give you a span
>>
>>  <span class="foo" id="bar">Here is some text of class foo with id 
>>bar.</span>
>>
>>1. Do we want to extend the markup syntax to permit this?
>
>My feeling is no. It breaks the fundamental concept of separating markup
>from content. This concept is one of the huge strengths of a wiki.

Matt,

What I'm proposing (and using on some of my ancient phpwiki 1.3.0's) 
is 100% about keeping markup separate from content. CSS classes and 
ID attributes allow my users to add semantic meaning to their content 
without having to worry about how it's going to presented, either now 
or after some future site-wide stylesheet alterations. For instance, 
my <div> code looks like this:

==== pullquote
What a great idea
====

which renders as <div class="pullquote"> and produces a pullquote. As 
far as the user is aware, this markup is defining what the item *is*, 
not how it should look or where it should appear on the page - which 
is what classes & ids are all about, eg http://csszengarden.com

Surely the beauty of wiki is it allows the html-phobic (or html 
people who want something faster, more fluid - wiki=quick) to create 
the pages they want to create, in as simple a form as possible? I'd 
also advocate extending the markup to allow classes & id tags to be 
applied to every existing wiki markup item, eg:

! Ingredients List

should generate*

<h2 id='Ingredients-List'>Ingredients List</h2>

On a modern, aggressively standards compliant, CSS-driven web-site, 
these kinds of things are essential. If my users want their 
Ingredients listed in a blue box with a graphical image-replacement 
gizmo in the site's font, I should be able to let them have that, 
seamlessly, and without them needing to learn any new syntax.

But I believe there should also be the option, for power users who 
use wiki because it's a fast way to build & maintain a web site, who 
can happily handle increased complexity, to directly add ids & 
classes to *any* markup, maybe something like:

Example 1:
!{appendix less-important #app1} Appendix A
would render as
<h1 id='app1' class="appendix" class="less-important">Appendix A</h1>

(space separated classes followed by a single #id since it must be unique)

Example 2:
this is *{warning}so dangerous* => this is <strong class="warning">so 
dangerous</strong>

Example 3:
==== sidebar tip #shutdown
Always use the Shutdown command before turning off your computer
====
would render as
<div class="sidebar" class="tip" id="shutdown-tip">
and would allow the site's *designer* (not necessarily end-user) to 
create 'For Dummies' style sidebar content, using different icons for 
tips, warnings, etc and use an XSL transformer to extract all the 
tips into a pocket-size printable PDF. Currently, none of those 
things are possible with a wiki.

BTW The markup used is entirely up for discussion - I'm only talking 
about the validity of the approach.

Being able to create page(s) called, eg, css-fonts, css-positioning, 
css-colors and have those auto-included in the template would allow 
those power users to add/update styles to go with the enhanced 
content they just added.

John.

* I have my headings in reverse importance (!, !!, !!! = big, med, 
small) as people often create a ! tag first, then want to use the 
'bigger' headings & have to go back through the document making their 
previously 'big' headings smaller.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
T:01274 581519 / M:07944 755613   www.kershaw.org  jo...@ke...
skype:johnmkershaw  AIM:johnkershaw  MSN:joh...@ho...