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 
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