On 2015-08-11 12:08, Randy Brown wrote:
"WikiCreole 1.0 support” is still on PmWiki's roadmap. But do any
PmWiki developers actually offer or encourage the use of Creole?
I don't use Creole and I neither encourage nor discourage the use of it.
:-) But I would prefer people to use PmWiki markup, as it is better
tested and known, and thus easier for me to help them.
There was never question to change PmWiki to Creole-only markups. Creole
markups can be added to PmWiki without disabling core markups.
I use it and I’d like to see it succeed, but if the Creole ship is
slowly sinking, I don’t want to throw more luggage on board.
That project was started when wikis were very popular as a very easy way
to publish for the web. Before wikis, one would have to write HTML. Wiki
markup is much, much easier to learn than HTML and to use, and the
automatic organization (links) and easy monitoring (recent changes) are
great for community-driven websites.
WikiCreole questioned the choices of different existing wiki markup and
tried to find the best compromise to unify them. This took a long time.
I am not aware of any wiki that stopped using their original markup
rules and started using WikiCreole.
What do you think? Does it have a future? I don’t hear much about it
anymore.
The question should probably be if wikis as they currently are have a
future for novice users, see below.
Some plusses:
- its similarity to other wiki markup languages,
- its use of backslashes mid-line to make a line break, and
- its non-use of apostrophes as markup
The apostrophe key is present on my touch-screen keyboards in the
"letters" layouts, and neither / nor * are. I feel that it is easier to:
type 3 apostrophes then the bold text, then 3 apostrophes
than to:
switch the layout to numbers/symbols, type two asterisks,
then switch back the layout to letters,
type the bold text,
switch the layout to numbers/symbols, type two asterisks,
then switch back the letters.
(or: switch the layout, type ****, try to position the cursor at the
middle, switch the layout, type bold text, position the cursor at the
end.)
Some minuses:
- asterisks and equal signs, like brackets, can be hard to type on a
touchscreen device. But that’s somewhat counterbalanced by the fact
that positioning the cursor between two apostrophes can be hard, and
visually two of them look just like a double quote - especially to
beginners.
This is correct, it is also sometimes difficult to correctly position
the cursor where you want even between larger characters, especially if
your fingers are big.
On a touch-screen device, it is also more difficult to select text and
help yourself inserting markup with the edit toolbar, and to scroll
within the scrollable text area when the content is larger.
- PmWiki’s documentation is not in Creole, so that can be confusing.
If you really need this, you can write it yourself. Creole has a tiny
tiny subset of the features possible with PmWiki, so it doesn't need
dozens of documentation pages - probably one page will be enough. And
Site.EditQuickReference.
What would you do if you were starting a new wiki for novice users?
Enable Creole? Encourage it? Discourage it?
I feel that unfortunately novice users are preoccupied with a huge
number of other things more important than learning wiki markup. Unless
they use it daily or at least once a week, they forget the markup rules
and have to re-learn them.
Novice users have two publishing experiences:
- text processors on a desktop computer, where they get what they see,
but which is terrible in a browser, cross-browser and cross-device, and
which is terrible to store and index in a text-based CMS like PmWiki;
- SMS, and social media websites or apps, where they enter plain text
but in very small input boxes, so again they see what they get, as only
a tiny element of the page is updated after their action, in real time.
I've been observing for a year a large wiki community which tries to
welcome newcomers but the wiki markup, and the editing really more
adapted for a physical keyboard, is something that scares the users. On
the other hand, advanced users sometimes abuse the wikimarkup, adding
too many things like bold + big + wikistyle on a single heading,
sometimes advanced tables for presentation, which makes the page hardly
readable for me, and even more scary for a novice user.
I don't have a solution, but I mentioned I'm working on a structured
page editor, not completely WYSIWYG but close enough for the most often
used types of content. We'll see if it helps novice users in a few
weeks.
Petko
--
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If this message helped you and saved you time, feel free to make
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