Brion Vibber wrote: UseModWiki probably took their cue from TeX, which handles newlines in roughly the same way. It's convenient at times, for example when quoting emails. But it's very inconvenient at times, and I think there probably should be a global configuration option or a wikitext tag to change the behaviour. There are times when 1 NL = <br/>, 2 NL = <p> would be very useful. And in my experience, MediaWiki's line break rules are often surprising to a new user. TeX has much more use for their line break rules -- TeX documents often have complex notation, and it's often advantageous to split it up over multiple lines and add comments. Also, TeX was invented in a time when editors which did word wrapping by inserting line breaks were much more common. With MediaWiki, the pros and cons are more balanced. -- Tim Starling

Tim> UseModWiki probably took their cue from TeX, which handles Tim> newlines in roughly the same way. It's convenient at times, Tim> for example when quoting emails. But it's very inconvenient at Tim> times, and I think there probably should be a global Tim> configuration option or a wikitext tag to change the Tim> behaviour. There are times when 1 NL = <br/>, 2 NL = <p> would Tim> be very useful. And in my experience, MediaWiki's line break Tim> rules are often surprising to a new user. Tim> TeX has much more use for their line break rules -- TeX Tim> documents often have complex notation, and it's often Tim> advantageous to split it up over multiple lines and add Tim> comments. Also, TeX was invented in a time when editors which Tim> did word wrapping by inserting line breaks were much more Tim> common. With MediaWiki, the pros and cons are more balanced. Hm So the idea is to have behaviour similar to TeX? If so I am a little confused whether _soft newlines_ are evil, when using an *external editor*. In order to describe what I have in mind, let me use the following notation [] denotes an empty line :H: denotes a hard newline :S: denotes a soft newline 1. So in (La)TeX I would use a text editor, which fill insert soft newlines say around the 70th column. Then I would write the following text. Hello [] Now comes text, which contains soft newlines, which are produced:S: by the editor but ignored by TeX. [] Regards Which would give me, produce `Hello' on 1. Line then a paragraph filled accordingly to TeX and again a newline with the `Regards'. So if I understand what you said above (and what I tested with Sandbox) this should give the same result in Wiki. 2. However: when I want to edit a wiki artikel with an external editor, text is not displayed as in 1. But Hello [] Now comes text, which contains *NO* soft newlines, because the editor does not produce them, so the line breaking is done by the Wikipedia engine [] Regards which produces the same result as one. Up to now I proceeded as in 1. But then unfilled the paragraphs that is I deleted the soft newlines. But is this really _necessary_? Independent of this I have chosen a different appropach, using hardlines. 3. The text is then in the following form: Hello:H: Now comes text, which contains *NO* soft newlines, because the editor does not produce them, so the line breaking is done by the Wikipedia engine:H:Regards which is displayed as text 1 and since most of the article is in form 2, that will also be nicely displayed. So again by questions: - shall I delete soft newlines? If not - could I add soft newlines in the other paragraphs such that they are displayed nicely in my editor, or is this risky since I might destroy the formating of the paragraphs. Since my possibility 3. Is buggy I would be interested in an answer to the problem I checked all the possibilities in the sandbox, and they seem fine, but I want to be sure. Thanks Uwe Brauer

Rowan> Can you just clarify what you mean by "soft newline" and "hard Rowan> newline" here? I can think of three types of wrapping that are Rowan> relevant to our discussion: sorry, I was confused myself by the behaviour of the editor (Xemacs) Rowan> 1) ASCII (or Unicode, ISO-8859-x or whatever) newline characters Rowan> (either CR, LF, or both, depending on the editting environment) Soft new lines are like 1) Rowan> 2) [X]HTML newline tags - <br />, and in a sense also <p> Rowan> 3) on-screen wrapping which isn't stored in the file in any Rowan> way, as available in most modern text editors and browser Rowan> textarea widgets [which is what I'd call "soft wrapping", Rowan> which is why I got a little confused] Right what (X)emacs calls hard newlines is a layout design which corresponds to 3) Rowan> If by "soft newlines" you mean what I've called type (1) - Rowan> i.e. the ASCII newline characters produced by pressing Rowan> "return" - then yes, current behaviour is for MediaWiki to Rowan> treat these as though they didn't exist, unless there are Rowan> two of them in a row. Of course, what looks nice in your Rowan> editor may look horrible in someone else's, so playing with Rowan> the display wrapping in your editor (type (3)) might be Rowan> marginally more sociable, but the actual page output should Rowan> be the same either way. Right, I did some test within the sandbox, and if I refill paragraphs with the external editor, that is soft newlines in the sense of 1) get changed, the internal editor of wikipedia, will represent these paragraphs a little different but not much. So I presume I can do that, since it looks much nicer in my editor and only slightly different in the internal. Rowan> Does this make any kind of sense and answer your question? Yes they helped clarify my own confusion, thanks Uwe

Phil> My preference is to divide long paragraphs up into sentences, Phil> with each one starting on a new line. Phil> That way, when you change something in the middle of a long Phil> paragraph, the "diff" can display the exact sentence which Phil> changed, rather than show a huge paragraph for you to hunt Phil> through. Ok, this is important to know: I tested my refilling using the external editor (X)macs and the text gets displayed slightly different in the internal editor, but maybe diff now has a problem? Well if chance by refilling the paragraphs of other users, - the display is not changed - the internal editor represent the text slightly different, - but oops what about the diff versions. I try to find out. Uwe