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This page (revision-40) was last changed on 26-Sep-2007 09:31 by ChuckSmith  

This page was created on 23-Feb-2007 03:55 by RadomirDopieralski

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At line 1 added 11 lines
== 2007-02-22
[[Christoph Sauer]] Dear creole parser developers. We have proposed a [[HyphenListMarkupProposal]]. I know that it is quite yet another change, but I think it's crucial. Please read through it carefully before you rant at me, because that was Chucks first response as well ;). I consider this as an important decision towards a Creole version 1.0. If we have sorted this out I feel pretty much that we are through.
My personal todolist/whishlist towards a Version 1.0
* getting through the [[HyphenListMarkupProposal]] discussion.
* general escape character (clarify usage of spaces before elements), see [[Escape Character Proposal]]
* clarify the usage of placeholder, discuss separate markup for placeholder and plugins/extensions/macros (term is engine specific) see confusion in [[Remove Placeholder Proposal]].
------------
At line 301 added 184 lines
-- AxelRauschmayer, 2007-02-28
I think that we have enough material to create a [[ListMarkupAlternatives]] page and try to summarize everything we have scattered around. Even if we don't come up with a good solution, we will at least have one good place to point people to.
The list markup has a lot of space for being creative and a lot of interesting features -- this invites [[Bikeshedding]]. What I'd like to propose is to allow a little creativity, put the propositions on that page, describe the good and bad things about them, compare them, etc. and then leave it to cool down a little (several days maybe) -- I'm sure that the one obvious solution will appear then :).
-- [[Radomir Dopieralski]]
Excellent idea! I am all to familiar with bikeshedding urges, myself, so the cooling down period makes a lot of sense. I've started to put my ideas on [[ListMarkupAlternatives]].
-- AxelRauschmayer, 2007-02-29
Moved this potential disadvantages to discussion:
''ambiguities in languages using dash with blanks before and after, such as German. -- As long as new lines may be part of paragraph, this will lead to random occurrences of hyphen in first line by any line-wrapping editor client. In the wikis I know, lists are commonly written **without** blank lines before and after.''
Don't understand. If a line wrapping client wraps a line, it will not put a hard coded line break in. So this does not create a random occurence. If you write german, at least I never put the dash at the beginning of a line if it occurs that I have to hard break the line, I always put it on the end:
{{{
Here's a German sentence:
Dies ist ein Gedankenstrich -
so etwas kommt vor.
I usually don't use this (Question is: does some grammatical rule forbid it?)
Dies ist ein Gedankenstrich
- so etwas kommt vor
You would never separate a word like this
Dies ist eine Sauerstoff
-flasche.
You would hard break the line after the dash, not before it:
Dies ist eine Sauerstoff-
flasche.
}}}
So I guess the second example might happen, but it's very rare and could be easily resolved, by using the order of the first sentence.
--[[Christoph Sauer]], 2007-Mar-06
In plain text, there are only hard breaks, at least with the text editors I know. "Soft"
breaks aren't encoded; they just appear in some text editors or text edit fields. So
hyphen can be a problem when the client forces automatic hard word wrap, like equal signs
(e.g. if the equal sign of equation a = 2 wraps to the beginning of a line). We can
probably accept it.
-- [[YvesPiguet]], 2007-Mar-06
I've added a page called [[List Markup Linebreak Argument]] since it repeatedly appeared, to discuss it there.
--[[Christoph Sauer]], 2007-Apr-14
------------------
Note that multiple dash/minus characters for nested list are actually a new invention -- only used in PukiWiki, together with other exotic markup: "*" for headlines, ">" in links, "%" for underline and strike, &ref(...) for images.
I'm all for allowing a "hyphen list" -- it *is* traditional and intuitive. I'm just against multiple dashes for nesting: to me it is totally arbitrary, new invention, looks ugly and doesn't really suggest the meaning.
As for rules for word wrapping (hyphenation), you only leave the dash at the right margin on the previous line. Most style guides advice to avoid breaking of hyphenated words, and if you must, to break them somewhere else than the hyphen. For the cases where you absolutely need to break a word at the hyphen there is this rare "double hyphen" glyph, looking like an equal sign: I was wrong about the repeating the hyphen on the next line.
This leaves us with only a few cases of when a hyphen can appear at the beginning of a line (and it cannot be avoided):
* when the paragraph starts with a suffix:
{{{
"-cious is the ending of both precious and spacious."
}}}
* when the paragraph starts with a negative number:
{{{
"-1 is a negative number"
}}}
* when someone writes a dialog and uses "-" instead of dashes for simplicity:
{{{
"- Yes - said John."
}}}
Requiring a space after the minus solves two first cases. Using proper dashes, real ones or the "--" abbreviation, solves the first and the last one.
-- [[Radomir Dopieralski]], 2007-Mar-08
Radomir, since you're doing an experiment with your students and you've implemented
Creole 0.5, have you got feedback on that star confusion?
Personally, I don't see a problem that needs to be fixed here. We shouldn't forget {{{##}}}
either.
-- [[YvesPiguet]], 2007-Mar-08
The experiment is running, the students had 2 classes so far -- they haven't had to **write** anything to the wiki yet, so it's going kind of slow. I will have a different occasion soon -- another group of students will be writing an exam online, and the teacher wants them to use a wiki for that -- this will be one-time event, so they will have to just read the cheatsheet and start writing right away, concentrating on the content not on the formatting.
I will open both wikis for viewing once the experiment is done. Right now the access remains restricted so that the students can't cheat and copy each other's work.
-- [[Radomir Dopieralski]], 2007-Mar-08
Ok, thanks. -- [[YvesPiguet]], 2007-Mar-08
I propose to //reject// this proposal, for the following reasons:
* star is less common than hyphen in normal text (dialogs and negative numbers);
* if the ambiguity with bold markup is really a problem (which I don't think it is), then the ambiguity between numbered lists and monospace should also be discussed now, so that we don't have to regret this decision;
* we're running out of markup characters, so it'll be difficult to avoid all ambiguities; since this one and {{{#}}}/{{{##}}} are harmless, we should accept them.
-- [[YvesPiguet]], 2007-Mar-21
//keep// - All my developers tell me (WikiWizard Project, CreolePageFilter) that it is easier to implement. Radomir seems to have problems too, otherwise he would not propose the space after bullet. Users instinctively use hyphens in list, I see it all the time - (e.g. just recently this one: [[http://www.marktberolzheim.de/Wiki.jsp?page=HVNews_blogentry_110307_1]]). The [People] at the WMS Workshop wanted it. Yves, it seems that your parser is pretty advanced so you don't have problems with it, but others have. It helps to make implementations easier and does not hurt the eye of the beholder (as {{{'''''}}} or {{{** *}}} does). Please keep your implementation and allow asterisk in lists additionally, but the least common denominator should be hyphens for lists.
Yes, we are running out of markup characters, but as long as we can afford it, we should avoid using the same characters, and this proposal does not introduce a new one - the rule of the frequency of usage is very important here: we can have same markup for rare combinations, but not for bold and lists.
-- [[ChristophSauer]], 2007-Mar-21
Radomir's implementation for MoinMoin passed the [[BoldAndListsAmbiguity]] test...
Hyphens would require to use the context to disambiguate lists and signatures, so I'm
not sure to understand why the implementation would be simpler.
I much prefer a single markup character for unordered lists to offering both, so I'll
switch completely if this proposal is accepted for 0.6. But what do you suggest for {{{##}}}?
I think that separating nowiki and monospace is important (we could give up inline
nowiki if we accept an escape character, but monospace as a normal style is highly
needed, imo).
Another way to disambiguate {{{**}}} and {{{##}}} would be to always consider them as
list markup when they are at the beginning of a line and as style markup elsewhere,
e.g. after a space.
-- [[YvesPiguet]], 2007-Mar-21
Except sometimes you'd want to put emphasis ({{{**}}}) on a whole paragraph...
If I understood your idea, Yves, it wouldn't be possible anymore. Right?
-- [[MicheleTomaiuolo]], 2007-03-22
No, I meant something like that:
{{{
A list:
** a single level-2
item spanning two lines
** Very important note: style is reset at the
end of each paragraph!
}}}
Skipping level-1 list is just for the sake of illustration. Spaces at the beginning or end
of lines should be discarded anyway (if they aren't by the Creole parser, I guess they are
anyway in HTML). That should be easy to implement with regexps.
I don't want to restart a whole discussion if everyone agreed on hyphens, though...
-- [[YvesPiguet]], 2007-03-22
People do commonly indent lists, especially second-level nested lists. Also the choice of which one is a list and which is bold seems pretty arbitrary, no? Then again, the meaning of this is easier to guess:
{{{
A list:
** a single level-2
item spanning two lines
**Very important note: style is reset at the
end of each paragraph!
}}}
-- [[Radomir Dopieralski]], 2007-Mar-22
It's done neither in Mediawiki where indenting is used for preformatted blocks, nor in
WikiCreole. I don't have experience with other engines. Edge cases are often unintuitive, whatever
we choose; that's why I insist on simple and consistent rules. I wouldn't mind your proposition
if so many WikiPedia lists hadn't any space. Actually, I don't really dislike it :-)
-- [[YvesPiguet]], 2007-Mar-22
I don't think {{{##}}} would be much of an issue, because I wouldn't expect monospace to be used much at the beginning of numbered lists. However, as Radomir's research suggests, bold is quite common at the beginning of list items. Also, keep in mind that some wiki engines like [[TracWiki]] even require a space before the asterisk or number sign.
-- [[Chuck Smith]], 2007-Mar-22
To be honest, I really liked the original Creole proposal: No nested lists. And thus my first Creole implementation supported * and - for lists, and there was no discussion about nesting. Great! :)
-- AlexSchroeder, 2007-04-03
Christoph wrote: //If you turn on line wrap in an editor, the editor will visually wrap the line. You will find this behavior in almost all editors. Those editors however do NOT insert hard line breaks, that could be confused by parsers so that they make the errors above -- they only do it visually. So far no one has brought up examples of such an editor, or editor option, that inserts hard line breaks into text. Therefore this is considered as an irrelevant argument unless someone provides an example of an editor that is relevant in practice.//
On Macintosh, text editors BBEdit (commercial) and [[http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/index.shtml|TextWrangler]] (free) have such an option.
-- [[YvesPiguet]], 2007-04-17
Version Date Modified Size Author Changes ... Change note
40 26-Sep-2007 09:31 32.753 kB ChuckSmith to previous restore
39 26-Sep-2007 01:03 32.766 kB 219.138.204.162 to previous | to last
38 21-Apr-2007 15:24 32.753 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last refactoring: moved annunc from talk to here
37 17-Apr-2007 11:02 31.894 kB YvesPiguet to previous | to last BBEdit and TextWrangler do hard wrap
36 14-Apr-2007 10:42 31.148 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last added link to linebreak argument on lists on relevant discussion
35 03-Apr-2007 12:09 30.974 kB 62.12.165.34 to previous | to last No nested lists.
34 22-Mar-2007 16:19 30.741 kB ChuckSmith to previous | to last reply to Yves about ##
33 22-Mar-2007 12:30 30.352 kB YvesPiguet to previous | to last List indenting
32 22-Mar-2007 12:03 29.945 kB RadomirDopieralski to previous | to last people commonly indent lists
31 22-Mar-2007 10:12 29.552 kB YvesPiguet to previous | to last Clarification
30 22-Mar-2007 09:33 29.004 kB MicheleTomaiuolo to previous | to last emphasis on whole par
29 21-Mar-2007 20:22 28.809 kB YvesPiguet to previous | to last What about sharp?
28 21-Mar-2007 18:26 27.975 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last keep
27 21-Mar-2007 18:24 27.894 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last keep
26 21-Mar-2007 18:24 27.89 kB ChristophSauer to previous | to last keep
25 21-Mar-2007 16:51 26.853 kB YvesPiguet to previous | to last Reject
24 08-Mar-2007 17:21 26.285 kB YvesPiguet to previous | to last Thanks
23 08-Mar-2007 17:16 26.239 kB RadomirDopieralski to previous | to last experiments
22 08-Mar-2007 16:47 25.568 kB YvesPiguet to previous | to last Experiment feedback?
21 08-Mar-2007 16:19 25.284 kB RadomirDopieralski to previous | to last single hyphens only
« This page (revision-40) was last changed on 26-Sep-2007 09:31 by ChuckSmith