On Sat, Aug 03, 2002 at 12:53:31PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
If we include markup to e.g. directly manipulate the colour of the table background or the floating of images it would be hard for skin authors to provide a consistent look and feel. A markup by content is always to be preferred.
No, not in this case. I would agree with you if this was a normal encyclopedia or any other big document with a fixed set of writers, but in the case of Wikipedia I don't think markup by content is the right way. The problem with that is that you require the users to know what types of content are defined and how they should be used.
However, WikiWiki is based on the fact that there is a very limited set of markup that is fixed and easy to learn. Trying to understand what the abstractions are that the creators of the styles had in mind may not be easy for everybody. Moreover, since the styles would be editable the markup would in some sense become a moving target. You cannot get much unWikier than that.
Have you noticed that Lee's proposal is starting to look more and more like LaTeX with command redefinitions? I am really a big fan of LaTeX and write all of my scientific work in it, (there markup by content is a must-have) but I don't think it is a good markup language for Wikipedia.
+-------------------------------+ | Demoscopic | +---------------+---------------+ | Inhabitants: | 600.000 | +---------------+---------------+ | Male | 304.000 | +---------------+---------------+ | Female | 296.000 | +---------------+---------------+ | Under 18 years| 127.000 | +---------------+---------------+ | History | +---------------+---------------+ | Founded | 1230 | +---------------+---------------+ | City rights | 1487 | +---------------+---------------+
Say, that's also not a bad table markup syntax. :-)
I wouldn't want to always remember which background to use for a factsheet header. Content markup is much easier:
You'd still have to look up which style exactly you would have to use. The most easy way to do that is to go to the pages that are similar to your page. Doing some cut & paste is then probably not beyond your capabilities. :-)
Having three or four of these standard table styles will probably cover 80% of all needed tables.
Sure, maybe now, but what will happen in the future as Wikpedia grows and the group of contributers will become bigger and more diverse? And then I'm not even thinking of what will happen if we replace the other HTML stuff.
-- Jan Hidders, who never knew that keeping things simple could be so hard