From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1NyZrT-0001h4-A2 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:08:15 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3F8F3E0B62; Mon, 5 Apr 2010 00:08:13 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-bw0-f223.google.com (mail-bw0-f223.google.com [209.85.218.223]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E390E0AF2 for ; Mon, 5 Apr 2010 00:08:06 +0000 (UTC) Received: by bwz23 with SMTP id 23so713859bwz.26 for ; Sun, 04 Apr 2010 17:08:06 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:sender:received:in-reply-to :references:date:x-google-sender-auth:received:message-id:subject :from:to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=OSIshQas2iAOs5qWKY5V5cAehaqAisgxgspPyMyABOw=; b=O/EAvhzNlyZTTRNoMOlCIgrQ53cP+VS7motImohVjzSkEOC+M5pLScP5Q2p3etszwI mXav004U11dkXro81UmtyGO8/69tLYK/GDX/CuuCGwQ/e0325r9+NZw1SYAlj5p4GJ6T X0DgrvnpvJ266beRQMsQLo1rXaeyestSP9rN8= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date :x-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; b=T+e/Yv5fNE6OTKXnqED/CcG5TgsUc5PYkP3iqG2yFvfgCWhztNOl/TQPyyoujCFMQx brv5X9jPPxYw+27+HgTfAKZmfET9jpLxt/bk6y1kDrMM1c+Y1zA/1h+B52sjYHjWf9nC MFN/qNU7Fe2ZeB5vQ8BKjitLShwkqWOhhlNNA= Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: yngwin.gentoo@gmail.com Received: by 10.204.33.199 with HTTP; Sun, 4 Apr 2010 17:08:06 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20100404123323.1689e9d4@angelstorm> References: <20100403163010.1897d663@mail.a3li.li> <4BB7D11F.7060207@gentoo.org> <20100404003152.4b2012da@angelstorm> <20100404123323.1689e9d4@angelstorm> Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2010 02:08:06 +0200 X-Google-Sender-Auth: 010638ca54d34579 Received: by 10.204.132.194 with SMTP id c2mr5698463bkt.167.1270426086304; Sun, 04 Apr 2010 17:08:06 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [Gentoo Phoenix] an official Gentoo wiki From: Ben de Groot To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: 39e6ed64-d2b8-48ec-ad2b-1c8ccb7fe1a0 X-Archives-Hash: 1e630cd2d6f64d03be90f1cdedfc943e On 4 April 2010 21:33, Joshua Saddler wrote: > Having to write a custom stylesheet just to get one wiki page to do what = you want is pretty dumb. Yes it would be. The idea is that you design consistent styling from the get-go, so your stylesheets will be ready for those needs. Pretty much the same as the current documentation solution. > How is it unfair? Because tables really are so much simpler to write in G= uideXML? No, because they were displaying different things, using different features= . > Here's a more complicated table: > > http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xml-guide.xml#doc_chap2_sect10 > source: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xml-guide.xml?passthru=3D1 And you think that's intuitive? Tables are a bitch, and I think both the GuideXML approach (copied from HTML) and the wiki syntax one are equally unintuitive. In my opinion reStructuredText is offering a better alternative: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html#tables > Mediawiki mostly involves memorizing how many quote or tick marks you use= . The beauty is: you don't have to memorize it, as it is just a click of a button on the editor interface away. > This markup is *completely nonsemantic*. In GuideXML, you know EXACTLY wh= at each tag means. No, I don't. The body and title tags are used quite differently from HTML, which is confusing. When do I use section and when do I use body? And what the frak is stmt? And why uri and figure instead of HTML's a and img tags? Except to a few dedicated people, GuideXML is confusing. > At any time, you can throw in HTML and CSS to do stuff, because apparentl= y Mediawiki isn't flexible enough on its own to generate your desired rende= ring. Rather, it's so flexible that it even accomodates using HTML and CSS should you wish so. But you don't have to. > Having to mix HTML with a totally different wiki syntax is stupid. Having to mix HTML with a different dialect of XML is equally stupid, and moreover it is confusing. At least with MediaWiki, you don't have to use it, as there are other options. > Having to learn CSS *on top* of learning wiki syntax (and HTML) just to w= rite a document is retarded. Wiki editors will not have to learn CSS, unless you have very specific needs that are unforeseen by the designers of the stylesheets you use. > You've tried to make the case that learning GuideXML is too hard, but in = order to use Mediawiki you'd need to learn at least 3 languages. You don't need to at all. Depending on how the maintainer configures things, at most one markup language should be enough. And that is greatly helped by the editor UI. So for most simple edits you don't need to learn any markup language at all. > [...] Leave the styling to a separate stylesheet, and let the code just b= e code. Yes, that's the whole idea. It's just that MediaWiki offers the flexibility to use those extra features, but you don't have to use them. > But that's at the price of standardization: since arbitrary tags and mark= up is allowed, there's nothing to keep consistency between documents, or ev= en within the same document. That's a matter of configuration. I'm all for locking that down and use a consistent standard styling, so only relatively simple markup is needed. (But we'd have the flexibility to do something more complex should we wish to configure things so.) > GuideXML at least has a clean, consistent visual representation. Once you= start allowing arbitrary markup, there'll be a million and one ways of rep= resenting the same thing, and that's not good for someone trying to wade th= rough documents. There *should* be a standard way of representing informati= on. I absolutely agree. And you can achieve the same with a wiki. >> And if you really wanted to, you could easily write an extension to >> parse GuideXML, so it could be used as wiki markup. So again, the >> markup is not really an argument against using a wiki instead of our >> current GuideXML+gorg setup. > > Except I haven't seen Mediawiki offer anything like our textual color pal= ette or other code syntax and block-level formatting flexibility. What do you mean? You can predefine styles in your CSS to express your "textual color palette" (if I understand correctly what you meant by that). There is advanced code syntax highlighting available, for example using GeSHi. >> 2. It is a non-transferable skill. You can't use it anywhere else. >> =C2=A0 =C2=A0And unless you are a regular GuideXML writer, you will have= to >> =C2=A0 =C2=A0look up its particular usage almost every time you do use i= t. > > It's just XML. That's all. If you can write HTML, then you can write XML.= XML is *easier*. It's got far fewer tags, for starters. That means much, m= uch less to learn. That's not fully correct. XML has in principle a practically infinite number of tags. It all depends on which "dialect" you use. If it is a dialect you do not use a lot, you will forget the usage of particular tags. > Oh, and guess what? You ebuild writers are already using XML every single= time you make changes to ebuilds: metadata.xml, etc. Yes, and I find that often I have to look up the specific usage of anything beyond the standard minimal set of tags. > Most of us have used GuideXML at some point or another in our /proj/ webp= ages and devspaces, if not in /doc/en/. Guess what? That's the same XML, an= d there's much, much more content constantly written for /proj/ and dev.g.o= than for /doc/. So don't try to tell me that people don't have at least pa= ssing familiarity with it. That's not the point. The problem is that most of us don't use it often enough to be sufficiently fluent in it, and you will never use it for anything else but gentoo.org pages. Moreover, there is no web UI for quick edits, with helpful buttons and hints... --=20 Ben de Groot Gentoo Linux Qt project lead developer