On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 10:11, Jerome Velociter <jerome(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
Vincent Massol wrote:
On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 3:23 AM, Guillaume Lerouge
<guillaume(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
Hi,
On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Jerome Velociter <jerome(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
Anca Paula Luca wrote:
> Anca Paula Luca wrote:
>> Marius Dumitru Florea wrote:
>>> Thomas Mortagne wrote:
>>>> Hi devs,
>>>>
>>>> We have to make a decision about that.
>>>>
>>>> So here are the proposals:
>>>>
>>>> 1) remove the block leading and trainling spaces
>>>> * The main goal is to make source formatting for tables for example
>>>> more readable
>>>>
>>>> 2) make the spaces inside paragraph non meaningfull
>>>> * Meaning an HTML like behavior where multiple spaces give one space
>>>>
>>>> 3) in case of 1) or 2) use ~<space> as non breaking space
>>>>
>>>> WDYT ?
>>> -0, the users will blame the WYSIWYG for messing up their nicely
>>> formatted table/lists/etc. when switching between the editors. This
will
>>> make the WYSIWYG unusable for a wiki syntax user.
>> 1/ this problem was there already
> with the old syntax I meant
>
>> and, if we use meaningful spaces, we only get
>> rid of the problem because users wouldn't be able to nicely format the
>> tables/lists/etc at all. So meaningful spaces means that you're taking
away the
>> possibility of nicely formated wiki syntax even to users that use _only_
wiki
>> syntax and therefore could take advantage of it.
>>
>> 2/ as it was mentioned in a discussion we once had with Vincent, I'm
wondering
>> how many wiki syntax users will there be out there once we get the new
wysiwyg
>> strong enough.
There always will be developers for that (even if not necessarily
through the wiki editor but rather through XEclipse or bespin's editor).
I have doubts about scripting velocity or groovy in a dialog box in the
wysiwyg :)
My 2 cents,
Jerome.
After thinking a bit more about it, here's my updated point of view:
1. Developers are mostly the only ones who will care about nice syntax
formatting in the wiki editor
2. We are working hard to make our wiki easier to use for business users
This points has nothing to do with the discussion. WYSIWYG wouldn't be changed.
3. Developers are advanced user thus able to
make their way round whether
ot not spaces are meaningful in wiki syntax
No. Definitely not. I cannot make my way around page content I cannot
read/write.
4. Apart from them, almost nobody cares about
nicely aligned tables and
indented code
Not true at all. Lots of users are not technical users but like the
wiki syntax and are used to it. For these users they care about
alignments.
5. As Jérôme pointed it out, developers will
use other tools than the
wiki editor anyway when developing
Again not true at all. The strength of the xwiki model is to be able
to develop in pages. I do that all the time and most advanced users do
the same.
Yes it's a strength to be able to wire up scripts and small apps
directly from the wiki editor. However, for more lengthy wiki
development, you want to use a real script editor like XEclipse. In the
end this question is not even relevant, the concerned editors being also
text editors, if you lose space formatting, its lost for them too.
6. Thus
we're basically fighting with a non-issue: trying to preserve a
feature that does not matter for the user base we need to convince our wiki
is the greatest around (*business users* are the *core users* of an
*enterprise
wiki*)
I don't know where you've seen that we would make spaces non
meaningful in the WYSIWYG editor.
So here's my updated vote:
*I'm -1 for making spaces non-meaningful, either in the WYSIWYG or the wiki
editor.*
Please reconsider as I don't think you're making a correct evaluation.
See the items above, your premises are not correct: we're NOT talking
about changing the WYSIWYG for non technical users.
If developers want nifty development features and
great-looking code, we
need to provide them with actual development tools (Eclipse, XEclipse,
Bespin). Business users don't care about that and they expect to have what
you see is what you get: a space when writing is a space on screen once
saved, be it in WYSIWYG editor or in wiki syntax.
This is completely not true for the wiki syntax. You're forgetting the
purpose of the wiki syntax. Its goal is to be able to write quickly
content. The written syntax must be clear and readable. It's not the
case right now when you start using: tables, HTML and velocity
scripts. It's a big problem, making xwiki unusable for all the places
where it has strengths over other wikis. If you look at XE pages
you'll see most of them contain either HTML or scripts and they are
not readable and impossible to write.
I have always had doubts since the beginning for table syntax and not
being able to align them as before but that alone wasn't enough to
make me change my mind. However that coupled with the huge issue with
writing scripts/HTML makes me completely convinced we cannot leave it
as it is.
Totally agreed.
Jerome
Thanks
-Vincent
Thanks to everybody's feedback,
Guillaume
> Otherwise put, is this use-case frequent
enough?
>
> Happy coding,
> Anca
>
>> Marius
>>
>>> +0,5 for 1) it's not critical for me but i'm not against it and we
>>> already decided to remove space before list item, headers etc.
>>> -0 for 2) I don't see the need for that and it's a lot easier for
the
>>> parser to make spaces meaningfull (what to do when you have "test **
>>> bold**" and things like that)
>>> +1 for 3)
>>>
>>> On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 15:44, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> This is our last chance to change this behavior. We've found several
>>>> places where having meaningful spaces are counter-productive:
>>>>
>>>> * in table cells since we can't align table anymore. For example:
>>>>
>>>> |= column1 |= column2
>>>> | this is some para | second column
>>>> | hello | world
>>>>
>>>> (not sure this will be rendered nicely in mail but you see what I
mean)
>>>>> * in scripts since having meaningful spaces prevents us from
aligning
>>>>> velocity or groovy scripts. For ex we can't write:
>>>>>
>>>>> #if (....)
>>>>> #if (...)
>>>>> do something
>>>>> # end
>>>>> #end
>>>>>
>>>>> To see a better example have a look at
http://tinyurl.com/ahz669
>>>>>
>>>>> What I think users real want are meaningful new lines but I see cons
>>>>> overweighting pros for having meaningful white spaces. Thus I'm
think
>>>>> we should strip whitespaces at beginning and end of lines including
>>>>> for line breaks.
>>>>> I'm slightly less sure for multiple spaces between words but
even
>>>>> there I think we could strip them have users use {{{ }}} to put a
non
>>>>> breaking space for ex (or introduce a {{space/}} macro or another
>>>>> special syntax although I'd rather we don't introduce a new
syntax).
>>>>>
>>>>> WDYT?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks
>>>>> -Vincent
>>>>>
http://xwiki.com
>>>>>
http://xwiki.org
>>>>>
http://massol.net
_______________________________________________
devs mailing list
devs(a)xwiki.org
http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
_______________________________________________
devs mailing list
devs(a)xwiki.org
http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
I think we can extract 3 concepts from different conversations:
1) do nothing and let things as it is, meaning spaces are meaningful everywhere
+ nothing to do ;)
- it's not possible to indent content in scripts like velocity or
cleanly align tables for example
2) make spaces non-meaningful everywhere and have two different spaces
in XDOM (space and non breaking space) for "readability" spaces to not
desapear
+ it's easier to align and indent things everywhere
- this means XDOM contains useless information for renderer
- the user has to understand that when he write multiples space it
will render only one
- to not break spaces other than non breaking spaces when switching
from WYSIWYG to wiki, we have to find a way to store the information
in rendered XHTML
3) let spaces meaningful by default (in pure wiki content) and modify
behavior by macros (like make spaces/new lines non meaningful for HTML
macro etc...)
+ it's more logical for user that HTML macro content apply HTML
behavior on spaces/newline and in the other hand in the simple wiki
syntax it's easier to understand for user that 2 spaces will render 2
spaces
- it's not possible to cleanly align table
Notes that spaces before list (<space><space>* item list) or headers
and generally before standalone blocks, etc. are not part of the
debate since this was already voted as part of the syntax.
WDYT ?
-1 for 1) I think we have to do something at least about indentation in scripts
-0 for 2) I really don't like the idea of having two different spaces
in XDOM one of them being useless for renderer, for me it's look too
much like a hack. Also I really think having non meaningful spaces
does not makes much sense for users, I remember it was a difficult
concept for me the first time I started to do HTML so I imagine how a
user that knows nothing about HTML and don't want to can think about
that.
+1 for 3) since the table align issue is not critical (it's the only
"issue" I can think of for pure wiki content) and it makes lots of
sense that HTML macros, Velocity macro and wiki content for example
are very different contents and should have their own behavior on
spaces and new lines. Also note that it's still possible align tables
with spaces but this could not render exactly the same thing that non
meaningful spaces (sometime the columns will be larger), it's a hack
but it makes the table align issue a very small issue compared 2)
--
Thomas Mortagne