Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Or in the course of ordinary editing he runs into a template which is not suitable to his subject, but it's beyond his technical capacity to trace the problem.
In which case they ALSO wouldn't have been able to figure out the markup which the template has replaced/simplified. No, we can't anticipate everything that every user might want to do and have a nice simple pre-packaged way of making that happen all ready for them.... but that strikes me as an illogical reason for not setting up utility templates at all.
In many places typing in the plain text would be much simpler. Many people use templates to impose some kind of uniformity. In these situations it takes considerable effort to root out the desired template, and determine how to disagregate the content to make it fit the template.
I'll never understand the 'it might be too complex so let's not do it' argument... setting aside that this just ISN'T complicated stuff, even if it WERE it doesn't TAKE AWAY anything. All the older methods of doing things are still there. Just now there are additional ways of getting things done - and if not everyone understands those, so what? It isn't hurting the people who don't.
Fine, then nobody should bitch when someone uses plain text. It's an "older method" that remains just as valid.
The 'we are building an encyclopedia not programming' argument is equally unmoving to me. Ok then... get rid of all HTML font settings, colors, tables, CSS, templates, et cetera.
I agree there are several of those that we could easily get rid of.
Ec