> I really haven't understood why using the (:markup:) markup is so > terrible. Maybe I'm strange, but when I was first using PmWiki and > reading the documentation, I was reading the documentation, not looking > at the documentation source. It didn't even occur to me to do so. > Thus I consider it very unlikely that beginners will be confused by the > (:markup:) markup. > In my view, the EditingForNewcomers page ought to work really hard to demonstrate to newcomers not just "this is a good starter markup set" but also "and this page is an example of what you can do with it -- see how powerful this small set of rules is."
On the other hand, if the page uses markup from outside the newcomer set, first (:markup:) and now possibly (:include:), the page is sending a subtle message that "of course, to do anything useful, you are going to have to learn more". It is undesirable (and incorrect) to imply that the newcomer set is not enough to do anything useful. Yes, it is a challenge to make a good page using just the newcomer set, but that is no reason not to try. So rather than "It didn't even occur to me to do so", the EditingForNewcomers ought to make it really clear that the reader can "see what this markup can do". What I found in writing the page is that the newcomer set is really good for *structuring* the content (which I believe was one of the Creole design goals), but the default PmWiki css file does not provide sufficient contrast between the elements, so the structure gets a bit lost in the presentation. The solution, in my view, is to enhance the css, not use additional markup to increase the contrast. I understand and support the reasons for keeping the default PmWiki css as light as possible, but wonder if it may be time to revisit this. So before introducing non-newcomer markup to describe the newcomer markup set, I would like to see if we can improve the page by improving the css. I have another question: should ! for a heading 1 be included? I left it out; Peter added it. There are arguments for and against. What led me to leave it out is that there is no gui button for h1. JR _______________________________________________ pmwiki-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
