On 1/5/07, Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com> wrote:
"IMHO the extension's rather low-level and
awkward. It works, but it's
ugly, and as with too many of our fancy syntaxes and extensions it drops
this big blob of incomprehensible _stuff_ directly into the text of the
article using it, cluttering up the editor's view.
The syntax lacks discoverability, which could be addressed by making
it more verbose. Beyond that, I don't think the deficiencies of our
general approach to extensions should be held against this particular
one.
What could be a long term solution? Perhaps a combination of the following:
a) a general namespace devoted to syntax that is passed to extensions,
e.g., Render:
b) a hook mechanism that makes it possible to define a frontend for
creating or updating data of a particular type (extension tag).
When following a red link to e.g. [[Render:Timeline US history]], one
would be taken to a selection box to choose the extension which should
be used for rendering. If a frontend is defined for that extension,
one could use it to create (and later edit) the timeline. But when
editing such a page, one could also switch to "Edit source" mode to
modify the extension code directly, and that would be the only mode
available if no front-end is given.
In such a model, tables could be turned into an extension. Their
frequent interaction with templates would complicate things, however.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
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