[Mediawiki-l] Re: easy html formatting?
Jan Steinman
Jan at Bytesmiths.com
Thu Dec 22 05:12:42 UTC 2005
> From: Sy Ali <sy1234 at gmail.com>
>
> On 12/21/05, Henry Ortega <juandelacruz at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is there an easy way to edit or create articles with proper HTML
>> formatting?
>
> Short answer: No
I think this is one of many, "Can I beat and hammer MediaWiki into
something I'm more used to."
I think, not only is the answer, "No," but it's actually, "No, isn't
that grand!"
Case in point: I've never seen a language as beautiful and easy to
read as Smalltalk. Yet, everyone who creates a new language makes it
look either like C, or like BASIC. But the way it looks affects the
way it's used!
I very much prefer wiki markup to XML-style things like HTML. I find
it really liberates my thinking, so that formatting is more natural
and more subconscious. And I've been doing HTML longer than I've been
doing wiki!
I think Ward Cunningham was aware of this. Besides the inventor of
wiki, he was also a Smalltalk pioneer and a HyperCard enthusiast. He
could have made it more "HTML-like", or could have spent his time
making an end-user HTML-entry system instead of wiki, but he crafted
wiki markup to fill a need that he saw as unfilled with HTML.
>> It doesn't make sense to me that we have put manual <BR> tags to
>> get a
>> break. Is there anything I can install extra that would let me
>> display what
>> I
>> entered the way I entered it? If I put a line break after each
>> line, it
>> should distinguish
>> it as a line break and insert a <BR> when displaying.
Hey, why don't you try the <poem></poem> extension that went whipping
through here a while ago?
But this is a strange request, coming from someone who wanted "proper
HTML formatting." Certainly, HTML is even LESS LIKELY to "display
what [you] entered, the way [you] entered it"!
I think you're just being grouchy. Relax. Play with wiki markup a
while. Go with the flow.
:::: The per capita wattage that is critical for social well-being
lies within an order of magnitude which is far above the horsepower
known to four-fifths of humanity and far below the power commanded by
any Volkswagen driver. -- Ivan Illich ::::
:::: Jan Steinman http://www.IslandSeeds.org/wiki/Energy ::::
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