Mailing List Archive

On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 05:04:54PM +0000, tarquin wrote:
> >This is wrong reasoning. We should allow as much HTML we do now,
> >but make parser understand more of it, so it can fix some mistakes.
> >
>
> What do we use HTML for? From what I've seen:
> * tables -- well, most people agree that HTML tables are ugly. we just
> haven't yet come up with a good enough alternative.
> * erroneous use of <BR> -- if you need a new paragraph, make one. If you
> feel you need a "half paragraph-break", then rethink your writing style.
> * LI, UL, OL -- people who haven't read the documentation. I suppose we
> can keep <LI> as a synonym for *
> * aligning images right or left with complex DIV or TABLE constructs --
> as above -- we need better syntax.
>
> any other uses I've missed?

* <b> and <i> where parses breaks (happens quite often)
* <center>
* <tt>
* <li><ul><ol> for mixed type nested lists
* <br> for breaking lines (<p> is not the same as <br>)
* <font> for size/color changes
* probably a lot more

On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, tarquin wrote:

> What do we use HTML for? From what I've seen:
> * tables -- well, most people agree that HTML tables are ugly. we just
> haven't yet come up with a good enough alternative.
> * erroneous use of <BR> -- if you need a new paragraph, make one. If you
> feel you need a "half paragraph-break", then rethink your writing style.
> * LI, UL, OL -- people who haven't read the documentation. I suppose we
> can keep <LI> as a synonym for *
> * aligning images right or left with complex DIV or TABLE constructs --
> as above -- we need better syntax.
>
> any other uses I've missed?

Yes

* Special characters, such as &eacute;, &auml;, &scaron; etcetera. - I would
be much in favor of keeping them.
* <sup> and <sub>. There isn't wiki for them yet, but it could be defined
* Special typefaces like <type>
* font sizes
* People using HTML for things like boldface and headers. Unnecessary, I'd
say, but it happens a lot.
* I myself have used <blockquote> at least once. (see [[Gall-Peters
projection]])
* ... and undoubtedly there's still a number I forgot.

Andre Engels

Dear Wiki-developers/maintainers,

Wouldn't it be the best to ban HTML altogether?
It has so may disadvantages. Instead, let's complete
the Wiki-syntax for all our formatting-needs...

Another thing: what is against a "half paragraph-break" ??
It just a way to subdivide a paragraph. It has been an accepted
style in many Dutch texts for decades, why not allow this?
I'm not saying it _has_ to be done by "<BR>", on the contrary:
we should invent a proper Wiki-markup for a single line-break!

Kind regards / sorry for bothering you (I've strong opinions
about this),
Pieter Suurmond


Andre Engels wrote:
>
> On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, tarquin wrote:
>
> > What do we use HTML for? From what I've seen:
> > * tables -- well, most people agree that HTML tables are ugly. we just
> > haven't yet come up with a good enough alternative.
> > * erroneous use of <BR> -- if you need a new paragraph, make one. If you
> > feel you need a "half paragraph-break", then rethink your writing style.
> > * LI, UL, OL -- people who haven't read the documentation. I suppose we
> > can keep <LI> as a synonym for *
> > * aligning images right or left with complex DIV or TABLE constructs --
> > as above -- we need better syntax.
> >
> > any other uses I've missed?
>
> Yes
>
> * Special characters, such as &eacute;, &auml;, &scaron; etcetera. - I would
> be much in favor of keeping them.
> * <sup> and <sub>. There isn't wiki for them yet, but it could be defined
> * Special typefaces like <type>
> * font sizes
> * People using HTML for things like boldface and headers. Unnecessary, I'd
> say, but it happens a lot.
> * I myself have used <blockquote> at least once. (see [[Gall-Peters
> projection]])
> * ... and undoubtedly there's still a number I forgot.
>
> Andre Engels
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

On Die, 2003-01-21 at 18:04, tarquin wrote:

> * erroneous use of <BR> -- if you need a new paragraph, make one. If you
> feel you need a "half paragraph-break", then rethink your writing style.

That's incorrect - there are valid uses for <BR>: text in tables, image
captions, certain link layouts, lists where the <ul> formatting would be
distracting .. even the Main Page uses <BR> repeatedly. I agree that it
is often misunderstood, but there are plenty of legitimate uses.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

Just thinking:

Sometimes, there's an image which is not very wide. You don't want it to
occupy a whole line, because that would create a huge white space. So,
you'll align the image left or right from the article. (I prefer right,
so the text of the article will align left).

Now that image has a caption. The caption would be wider than the image,
which looks ugly, so you want to wrap it. Also, the caption should be
centered with the image.
What I do is

<table align=right>
<tr>
<td align=center width=1>
[[image:xyz.jpg]]<br>
Some longer caption, which is wider than the image itself
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Someone explain to me how to do that in wiki syntax, with the *same*
result, without the code looking more ugly?
(you are free to invent a wiki table syntax for that puropse!)

Magnus

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, Magnus Manske wrote:

> Just thinking:
>
> Sometimes, there's an image which is not very wide. You don't want it to
> occupy a whole line, because that would create a huge white space. So,
> you'll align the image left or right from the article. (I prefer right,
> so the text of the article will align left).
>
> Now that image has a caption. The caption would be wider than the image,
> which looks ugly, so you want to wrap it. Also, the caption should be
> centered with the image.
> What I do is
>
> <table align=right>
> <tr>
> <td align=center width=1>
> [[image:xyz.jpg]]<br>
> Some longer caption, which is wider than the image itself
> </td>
> </tr>
> </table>
>
> Someone explain to me how to do that in wiki syntax, with the *same*
> result, without the code looking more ugly?
> (you are free to invent a wiki table syntax for that puropse!)

Although also using HTML in this case, I still use a slightly different
syntax. What I do is:

<table align=right>
<tr><td align="center">[[image:xyz.jpg]]
<tr><td align="center">
''Some longer caption, which is wider<br>than the image itself''
</table>

And yes, I know it is bad HTML to not close the tr's and td's, but I guess
I'm lazy...

Andre Engels

Andre Engels wrote:

>Although also using HTML in this case, I still use a slightly different
>syntax. What I do is:
>
><table align=right>
><tr><td align="center">[[image:xyz.jpg]]
><tr><td align="center">
>''Some longer caption, which is wider<br>than the image itself''
></table>
>
>
OK, here's an idea: Let's keep the <table>s valid, but expand the wiki
syntax for some often reoccurring cases!

I'm going to use HTML-style here, but we can do | or \ or {} or whatever:

<layout image right>
[[image:xyz.jpg]]

''Some longer caption, which is wider<br>than the image itself''
</layout>

Which would translate
<layout image right> => <table align=right width=1><tr><td align=center>
</layout> => </table> (or </td></tr></table>)

We could also define that within <layout>, all blank lines are converted
into <br>s.

Similar for the "current events" on the Main Page:
<layout box center>
...stuff...
</layout>

All this would _not_ eliminate <table> tags from wikipedia, but for
every-day stuff, it would do. Things like the PSE or the nucleotide
decay table would stay HTML.

Comments?

Magnus

On Mit, 2003-01-22 at 16:03, Magnus Manske wrote:

> <layout image right> => <table align=right width=1><tr><td align=center>
> </layout> => </table> (or </td></tr></table>)

A table containing an image should be as wide as the image itself. That
way, you do not need any arbitrary breaks in the text. That's one reason
I think this kind of layout should be supported by our [[Image]] syntax.

[[Image:Foo.jpg width=400]] -> generate 400 pixel wide version and show
that one, image links to original size version

[[Image:Foo.jpg showtext]] -> show the text of the image as caption

[[Image:Foo.jpg right]] -> embed in right-aligned table which uses the
image width as width

For other tables, we should develop a table syntax, as is already being
discussed on Meta. I do support the eventual goal of getting away from
HTML, but only if we can do everything we're doing now. Note that we'll
have to do *lots* of replacing and rewriting if we ever disable HTML.

Regards,

Erik

--

FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

Erik Moeller wrote:
> For other tables, we should develop a table syntax, as is already being
> discussed on Meta. I do support the eventual goal of getting away from
> HTML, but only if we can do everything we're doing now. Note that we'll
> have to do *lots* of replacing and rewriting if we ever disable HTML.
>
> Regards,
> Erik


So the sooner the better (ban HTML).
Pieter

On Mit, 2003-01-22 at 16:24, Pieter Suurmond wrote:

> So the sooner the better (ban HTML).

First we have to replace it. Care to contribute some code? The image
page handling desperately needs rewriting.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

Erik Moeller wrote:

>[[Image:Foo.jpg showtext]] -> show the text of the image as caption
>
>
>
It would be a good idea to store the caption of the image on the image
page. (or maybe say the first line of the image page is magically the
caption)


A system like that would also allow us to apply a CSS class to the
caption text automatically, so all image captions would have the same
font & style

>
>
>

On Mit, 2003-01-22 at 16:42, tarquin wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> >[[Image:Foo.jpg showtext]] -> show the text of the image as caption
> >
> >
> >
> It would be a good idea to store the caption of the image on the image
> page. (or maybe say the first line of the image page is magically the
> caption)

Yes, that was my original idea, but you have to make this optional,
otherwise many layouts would be broken in the transition. Note that many
of our image pages contain comments like "found this somewhere", because
people treat the image description line on the upload page like the
summary line on the edit page.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

Erik Moeller wrote:

>
>Yes, that was my original idea, but you have to make this optional,
>otherwise many layouts would be broken in the transition. Note that many
>of our image pages contain comments like "found this somewhere", because
>people treat the image description line on the upload page like the
>summary line on the edit page.
>
>
We can fix those :-)
We could also say that if the first line of the image page is "No
caption", then no caption is to be displayed, even if a [[Image: ...
showtext]] requests it

>
>

tarquin wrote:

> We could also say that if the first line of the image page is "No
> caption", then no caption is to be displayed, even if a [[Image: ...
> showtext]] requests it

I'd like to have a longer description on some figures, especially some
of my self-drawn diagrams, which are far from self-explaining... :-)

So, how about defining the caption as "everything until the first
horizontal line (----)"? We could have multiple lines on the description
page, horizontal line, then the source and other information that
doesn't really belong into the caption. "----" as the first line of the
description would inhibit a caption automatically.

Magnus

On Mit, 2003-01-22 at 17:10, Magnus Manske wrote:
> tarquin wrote:
>
> > We could also say that if the first line of the image page is "No
> > caption", then no caption is to be displayed, even if a [[Image: ...
> > showtext]] requests it
>
> I'd like to have a longer description on some figures, especially some
> of my self-drawn diagrams, which are far from self-explaining... :-)
>
> So, how about defining the caption as "everything until the first
> horizontal line (----)"? We could have multiple lines on the description
> page, horizontal line, then the source and other information that
> doesn't really belong into the caption. "----" as the first line of the
> description would inhibit a caption automatically.

The "----" separation makes sense (a bit hackish), but I don't see the
need for any forced inhibition if we make the captions optional
(showtext) anyway.

I'd also like to repeat that an image page should ''always'' show the
image it refers to, in its 1:1 dimensions.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de

> It would be a good idea to store the caption of the image on the image
> page. (or maybe say the first line of the image page is magically the
> caption)

But what if the same image is used on several pages? It is rare, but it does
happen, and one might want different captions in those cases.

Andre Engels

On mer, 2003-01-22 at 07:48, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Note that many
> of our image pages contain comments like "found this somewhere", because
> people treat the image description line on the upload page like the
> summary line on the edit page.

As indeed they should, that being the intent of its creation. The
copying of the upload note into the image description page on creation
was done just to get _something_ in them.

A single-line input is unfriendly for long descriptions, and captions
are a whole nother matter. Perhaps the upload form needs to be made a
little more flexible?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

tarquin wrote:

>What do we use HTML for?

I doubt that anybody can come up with a complete list from memory;
I'm often suprised to see a new use of HTML when I come across it.

We should go through each HTML tag that we currently pass through,
one by one, and decide how to make it a wiki markup.
(Possibly wiki markup that looks just like an HTML tag --
I still think that this is perfectly reasonable
for rarely used markup like <br> and <i> --
but it still needs to be parsed as wiki markup,
not just passed through unparsed.)
Then we need to search for all appearances in the text
(a case insensitive search for "<%s>", "<%s ", and "<%s\n" in C notation)
and translate every instance into the new syntax (if necessary) --
or agree that we will not support the effect being done
(quite possible for some uses of <font>, for example).

Actually, we should probably search for uses in the first step,
so that we can make all necessary decisions right up front;
but we'll still need to search again just before changing the code.
To avoid unnecessarily extended discussions over and over again,
we make all of the decisions on, say, [[meta:HTML_to_wiki]]
(there may well already exist a meta page along these lines),
and direct people there if they ask about it on <wikitech-l>.


-- Toby

Andre Engels a écrit :

> Although also using HTML in this case, I still use a slightly different
> syntax. What I do is:
>
> <table align=right>
> <tr><td align="center">[[image:xyz.jpg]]
> <tr><td align="center">
> ''Some longer caption, which is wider<br>than the image itself''
> </table>

About banning HTML and using wiki-like syntax, there is an interesting
feature in [ http://phpwiki.sf.net/ phpwiki ] that allow wiki-like
tables.

the feature look like :

| | My column | Other column
| first line | value | value
| other line | value | ''value''

every line starting with a | is part of a table (I don't thing starting
a line with a pipe is something very used for anything that is not that
kind of stuff...)

if you write :

| | My column | Other column
| first line |v big value | value
| other line | ''value''

You'll have "big value" in a <td> with a colspan=2 ( v mean that you
want to extend the cell to the bottom)

|vv mean <td colspan='3'> etc.

|> mean rowspan=2 |>> mean rowspan=3
etc.

I do really like this idea (I use phpwiki at home and at work, and that
of tables is very usefull...)

The only thing that phpwiki's table don't have is "align='right'" on the
whole table (<table align='right'>), but I'm sure it can be done with a
good idea (like "|[table: align=right]|" before the first line, or any
other idea...

The probleme is that it can be slow to render and need a lot of RAM (may
be).
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Jocelyn Giraud wrote:
>
> Andre Engels a écrit :
>
> > Although also using HTML in this case, I still use a slightly different
> > syntax. What I do is:
> >
> > <table align=right>
> > <tr><td align="center">[[image:xyz.jpg]]
> > <tr><td align="center">
> > ''Some longer caption, which is wider<br>than the image itself''
> > </table>
>
> About banning HTML and using wiki-like syntax, there is an interesting
> feature in [ http://phpwiki.sf.net/ phpwiki ] that allow wiki-like
> tables.
>
> the feature look like :
>
> | | My column | Other column
> | first line | value | value
> | other line | value | ''value''


YES I LOVE THIS !!!
Elegant, and much more readable than that dirty html.
I have no objections. Greetings, Pieter Suurmond.

>
> every line starting with a | is part of a table (I don't thing starting
> a line with a pipe is something very used for anything that is not that
> kind of stuff...)
>
> if you write :
>
> | | My column | Other column
> | first line |v big value | value
> | other line | ''value''
>
> You'll have "big value" in a <td> with a colspan=2 ( v mean that you
> want to extend the cell to the bottom)
>
> |vv mean <td colspan='3'> etc.
>
> |> mean rowspan=2 |>> mean rowspan=3
> etc.
>
> I do really like this idea (I use phpwiki at home and at work, and that
> of tables is very usefull...)
>
> The only thing that phpwiki's table don't have is "align='right'" on the
> whole table (<table align='right'>), but I'm sure it can be done with a
> good idea (like "|[table: align=right]|" before the first line, or any
> other idea...
>
> The probleme is that it can be slow to render and need a lot of RAM (may
> be).
> _________________________________________________________________
> "This e-mail is intended for the exclusive use of the individual or
> entity named above and may constitute information that is priviledged or
> confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure . Dissemination ,
> distribution , forwarding or copying of this e-mail by anyone other than the
> intended recipient is prohibited . If you have received this e-mail in error
> , please notify us and completly delete or destroy any and all electronic or
> other copies of the original message"
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>
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><table align=right>
><tr>
><td align=center width=1>
>[[image:xyz.jpg]]<br>
>Some longer caption, which is wider than the image itself
></td>
></tr>
></table>
>
>Someone explain to me how to do that in wiki syntax, with the *same*
>result, without the code looking more ugly?
>(you are free to invent a wiki table syntax for that puropse!)

In Wikitax (http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitax), the above would be
acheived with something similar to:

[.[.:media: xyz.jpg align="right" caption="Some longer caption, which is wider
than the image itself."]]

Wikitax is by no means finished, and completely open to revision and
refinement. I'm getting to the point where I'm startin' to wrap my brain
around grammar specification (LR, LALR, BNF, lex/yacc, etc.). So I'm just
starting to play around with parsing various bits of Wikitax in various
ways. I'll submit what I've got of a BNF specification soon... Someone
with a more solid understand of linguistics could help out with a thing or
two, I'm sure.

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Derek Moore wrote:
> Wikitax is by no means finished, and completely open to revision and
> refinement. I'm getting to the point where I'm startin' to wrap my brain
> around grammar specification (LR, LALR, BNF, lex/yacc, etc.). So I'm just

Great! (I love formal metasyntaxes)
Pieter

> starting to play around with parsing various bits of Wikitax in various
> ways. I'll submit what I've got of a BNF specification soon... Someone
> with a more solid understand of linguistics could help out with a thing or
> two, I'm sure.