On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 8:53 PM, Jay Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion Vibber" brion@pobox.com
Requiring people to do all their document creation at this level is like asking people to punch binary ASCII codes into cards by hand -- it's low-level grunt work that computers can handle for us. We have keyboards and monitors to replace punchcards; not only has this let most
people stop
worrying about memorizing ASCII code points, it's let us go beyond fixed-width ASCII text (a monitor emulating a teletype, which was really a friendlier version of punch cards) to have things like
_graphics_.
Text can be in different sizes, different styles, and different
languages. We
can see pictures; we can draw pictures; we can use colors and shapes to
create
a far richer, more creative experience for the user.
None of which will be visible on phones from my Blackberry on down, which, IIRC, make up more than 50% of the Internet access points on the planet.
Minimalism is your friend; I can presently *edit* wikipedia on that BB, with no CSS, JS, or images. That's A Good Thing.
A good document structure would allow useful editing for both simple paragraphs and complex features like tables and templates even on such primitive devices, by giving a dedicated editing interface the information it needs to address individual paragraphs, template parameters, table cells, etc.
I would go so far as to say that this sort of fallback interface would in fact be far superior to editing a big blob of wikitext on a small cell phone screen -- finding the bit you want to edit in a huge paragraph full of references and image thumbnails is pretty dreadful at the best of times.
-- brion