[Note: I've crossposted to the main list so that people can see that there's a proposal to recognise "=".]
Brion Vibber wrote:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
Paul Ebermann wrote:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
"=" worked in UseMod and must be kept supported.
Ah, I understand what the issue is now. You're using "=" *already* there!
And no arguing is permitted (unless it comes from Polish Wikipedians). Markup must not break.
Of course everybody has the opportunity to argue -- unless you're suggesting a fork in the wiki markup, that is.
I think with an automatic conversion this would not be an important problem.
That would solve it once, if nobody's in the habit of using "=".
This would be a problem as people got used to that notation.
So the question is, are they used to it now? I would assume yes, meaning that "=" should be supported.
As far as I know it was only ever removed by oversight. I have no objection to putting it back, and will do so if no one else either does it first or gives a very convincing reason otherwise.
My concern is that a line bounded by "=" could show up naturally in a context of writing out a mathematical equation. It could easily be avoided by changing the line breaking, however. So I'd appreciate it if somebody would verify (by SQL) that no such pattern exists in the nonUseMod wikis now; in the future, the "Preview" button will catch it.
HTML headers do not impose any kind of hierarchical structure. (If they did, you'd have to put all following text and subheadings _inside_ the open/close tag pair, probably looking something like the list tags.) Our ==headers== are simple aliases to the HTML headers, and should not be burdened by overcomplex hierarchy rules, magical collapsing tables of contents (if you need a table of contents, your article is too long), or magical detectors that chew out the user for not insufficiently (s)lavishly constructing their markup.
Actually, our headers *do* already impose a heirarchical structure. Turn on numbered headers in your user preferences to see it. This is a very desirable option IMO. No arguing is permitted unless it comes from people with that preference set ^_^.
-- Toby
On Tue, 2002-11-05 at 09:33, Toby Bartels wrote:
Actually, our headers *do* already impose a heirarchical structure. Turn on numbered headers in your user preferences to see it. This is a very desirable option IMO. No arguing is permitted unless it comes from people with that preference set ^_^.
Our headers impose no such thing. A misconceived "number headers" feature, which users were so annoyed with that it was banished to off-by-default and forgotten about by developers long long ago, attempts futilely to impose such a thing.
Its continued existence is a dark blot upon the soul of the wiki.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
|From: Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com |Date: 05 Nov 2002 10:15:13 -0800 | |On Tue, 2002-11-05 at 09:33, Toby Bartels wrote: |> Actually, our headers *do* already impose a heirarchical structure. |> Turn on numbered headers in your user preferences to see it. |> This is a very desirable option IMO. No arguing is permitted |> unless it comes from people with that preference set ^_^. | |Our headers impose no such thing. A misconceived "number headers" |feature, which users were so annoyed with that it was banished to |off-by-default and forgotten about by developers long long ago, attempts |futilely to impose such a thing. | |Its continued existence is a dark blot upon the soul of the wiki. | |-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) |
The auto-number preference is still there, but doesn't work, it seems. As an old tech writer I can easily imagine situations where it might be useful, or at least I can imagine readers who would prefer it. But I don't think it's all that important.
However, I believe that ordered use of =, ==, ===, ==== and so on does serve important, encyclopedic purposes:
--- Encouraging writers who use headers to use them logically.
--- Regularizing optional standard features like ==External Links==
-- Making articles look alike.
-- Allowing incoming 'bots and spiders to infer the structure of an article and make use of that information.
-- Laying the groundwork for future hypertext applications that we know nothing of except that properly ordered text will be more useful than random disorder.
-- Keeping out the *ML markup languages
20 years at this generic markup game and still fighting, Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
Ortolan88 wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Actually, our headers *do* already impose a heirarchical structure. Turn on numbered headers in your user preferences to see it. This is a very desirable option IMO. No arguing is permitted unless it comes from people with that preference set ^_^.
Our headers impose no such thing. A misconceived "number headers" feature, which users were so annoyed with that it was banished to off-by-default and forgotten about by developers long long ago, attempts futilely to impose such a thing.
The numbered headers option (which obviously should be off by *default*) is great, I use it all the time. If the developers have forgotten about it, then that's only because they don't read my posts to the mailing list or SourceForge.
The auto-number preference is still there, but doesn't work, it seems. As an old tech writer I can easily imagine situations where it might be useful, or at least I can imagine readers who would prefer it. But I don't think it's all that important.
Why do you say that it doesn't work? It has one bug (IMO), in that it doesn't turn itself on unless there are headers of different sizes in the same article. Otherwise it works for me.
-- Toby
But H1 is the title of the article itself at the top of the page -- thus we shouldn't be using it within the article text; the next heading is H2.
Toby Bartels wrote:
[Note: I've crossposted to the main list so that people can see that there's a proposal to recognise "=".]
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