zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[Jaap Karssenberg <jaap.karssenberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 12:01 PM, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I argue that yes, code should be allowed anywhere, based on these points:
> 1) Currently, there is no semantic usage of markup anywhere in Zim.
> For instance, there is no Table of Contents, no searching only
> headers, no functions for interacting with the markup in any way.
> 2) Users _will_ be sloppy and paste code without marking it as such.
> Causing dataloss in this case is beyond forbidden. It is a real reason
> that I have been looking for a Zim alternative for the past week or
> so.
> 3) I personally like some code to be fixed-width (Python snippets, for
> instance) but others to be variable, such as bash. English lettering
> is not my natural lettering, and fixed-width is very difficult for me
> to read. That said, I do want to use it in some special cases.
> Therefore, there is no "code" but rather "this-type-of-code" and
> "that-type-of-code" and Zim should not force the user to display it
> all in the same way. This is one of MS's biggest criticisms: my way or
> the highway. Don't make Zim like this too.
> 4) The real issue is not code, but whether the user can trust Zim not
> to alter his precious data. Currently, the answer is no.

Yes, but you didn't answer my main design question: when should zim
automatically escape data and when should it assume the user is
wanting to input wiki text ?

As stated before we can disable all use of wiki syntax in the editor,
but than we loose a feature I know is used a lot by specific users.

If the concern is only about pasting data we can solve that by a
special paste command as discussed before. If the concern applies to
all editing, it is much more difficult to get it right.

I'm not unwilling to add a way to escape wiki syntax. But I would like
to come to a good design decision how this should work and when it
should be applied.

Btw. zim does in fact have some semantic features, it was designed to
more semantic than just markup, and if anything I wish to improve on
that. For example the search function does rate text in a heading
higher than text in a normal paragraph. Another example is that when
exporting the headings can be adjusted automatically to make sure the
levels are properly nested.

Regards,

Jaap