> Eric, see! Here we go with, let's throw a plugin to simplify, except it
StyleSheetShortcuts is *not* a plugin... just some CSS definitions...
which you don't even need to understand in order to *use* them. The
only thing you need to know is the classnames that are defined there,
like:
left, right, center, justify, floatleft, floatright, big, small
Just pick the appropriate classname and use it in a 'class wrapper',
like this:
{{left{...}}}
> doesn't simplify, it complicates for the end user. I had gone to your
> site and tried to install your QuickEditPackage, and got all kinds of
> error messages and it totally messed up the TW I was experimenting on.
> So I did something wrong. I've uploaded some stuff into tiddlers before,
> but I admit I get lost on your site. Do I have to import all those
> tiddlers separately? I stuck the
> URLhttp://www.tiddlytools.com/#QuickEditPackageinto the import pathname
> and got a huge list. So I obviously didn't figure that out right.
QuickEditPackage does considerably more than provide simple formatting
assistance. It provides a wide range of 'QuickEdit' buttons that
perform all sorts of editing-related functions, such as 'find-and-
replace', 'read text from file', etc. As such, it consists of quite a
few tiddlers, and is unfortunately, not so easy to install. I've
tried to write up some instructions (see the QuickEditPackage tiddler
itself), but the installation steps can still be a bit confusing for
some folks. I'd love to automate the installation process, but that
is a non-trivial problem, primarily because every TiddlyWiki document
can be extensively customized, so there is not reliable way to
programmatically know *exactly* what changes should be applied to any
given document. Thus, installing this package remains (at least for
now) a hand-driven process.
> Bottom line, Reenan is on the right track, gotta have something really
> simple for the code. Forget the CSS for the end-user, guys. Doesn't
> work. Gotta be something like [*img ... don't tell me that character
> sequence has been taken.
TiddlyWiki is built on top of browser-based technolgies: HTML, CSS and
Javascript. These are the 'lingua franca' for *all* TiddlyWiki
documents, and are fundamental to how TiddlyWiki works.
TiddlyWiki relies on the brower's underlying functionality to actually
render the content. One inescapable implication of this is that if
something is not supported by HTML, it is not supported by TiddlyWiki
(at least not without adding some cleverly written CSS definitions or
Javascript-bearing plugin tiddler).
For example, the browser's handling for images has built-in support
for aligning to the left margin or right margin (allowing text to
'flow' around it):
<img src="..." align="left"> or <img src="..." align="right">
but does NOT provide an intrinsic way to make an image float in the
center. Of course, the HTML syntax could be enhanced to allow center
alignment, but that has two major issues:
First of all, way back 'in the day', when the W3C committees were
still defining the HTML standards, they quickly realized that, in
order to address numerous formatting deficiencies, the HTML syntax
would rapidly become overwhelmed with hundreds of new specially-
defined attributes for each specific kind of formatting option, and
would also result in a never-ending revision cycle for the HTML
standards in order to support an increasingly cumbersome syntax.
(note: this same issue exists when attempting to define new TW wiki-
syntax... the continuous addition of new special-purpose character
sequences would rapidly bloat the code and bring TW development to a
virtual standstill)
Second, any new HTML syntax they defined would have to be implemented
by the various browser manufacturers before it could be of any use,
and each new revision to the HTML standard would necessitate
additional updates to the browser in order to add a few more special-
use attributes.
Fortunately, they saw another way to extend the formatting abilities
of HTML and make it much easier to create and maintain consistent page
layouts, by inventing a new general-purpose syntax that could describe
the appearances of any HTML page element, and would permit flexible
customization and extensions in the future, without needed to
continually re-define the language standards. They called this new
syntax "Cascading Style Sheets" (CSS).
Of course, this new syntax also had to be implemented by the browser
manufacturers and, for quite a while, browser support for CSS was not
always available or was poorly-implemented... especially because the
CSS syntax standards were still evolving.
However, that was then... this is now. Today, CSS is robustly-
supported by *all* the major web browsers and is a fully-integrated
part of how you define the look-and-feel of your page content.
Still, as you noted, CSS is not currently part of your skill-set and
you are, apparently, adamantly opposed to learning even a few basic
bits syntax that allow you to achieve the results you are seeking.
Personally, I think that attitude is self-defeating and counter-
productive... you want to be able to achieve finely-controlled custom
formatting of your content, but don't want to learn how that is done.
Even so, it is not entirely unreasonable to want to have a simplified
way to apply these CSS-based formatting enhancements, so that the
amount of learning that is required to gain proficiency in their use
is minimized. That is why I created this tiddler:
http://www.TiddlyTools.com/#StyleSheetShortcuts
After you follow the two simple steps I previously described (import
the tiddler, then add it to your StyleSheet), you don't have to know
anything else about CSS, except the names of the classes that the
tiddler defines (which, as noted at the top of this message, are
mostly simple and obvious, like "left", "right", "big", "small",
"red", "blue", etc.
Thus, by importing this one single tiddler, it will allow you to make
use of the *necessary* CSS class names to achieve the formatting you
want, while minimizing the effort needed to learn just a few
classnames and one piece of wiki-syntax (the class wrapper, i.e.,
"{{classname{...}}}").
Although I'm sure this isn't the answer you want, it's the only one
that makes sense.
enjoy,
-e
Eric Shulman
TiddlyTools / ELS Design Studios
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