zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[Fabian Moser <e-mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 8 Jun 2010 13:01:25 +0300
Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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.

Good point, but you suggested to change that:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/373280

> 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.

On the other hand I love being able to copy-paste text containing
markup and see Zim render it with the markup actually being parsed.
Users will share this love.

> 3) I personally like some code to be fixed-width (Python snippets, for
> instance) but others to be variable, such as bash.
> ...

What you are basically saying is, that you want to put your code
(verbatim, escaped whatever) into any format you choose. This could be
achieved by something similar to the %% (double percent) in dokuwiki.
If that is what you mean, I agree that this is useful.

> 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.

This is a duplicate of 2) as I see it.

> The argument for exporting to Latex is again the semantic argument. 

And how would that make it less valid? Adds to my comment for 1).


Please allow me to sum it up slightly different:

1) You (and supposedly several others) want Zim to ignore wiki markup
and display whatever you type as-is in any font and formatting you
choose for that particular data. There is no way to achieve this right
now.

2) To me (and supposedly several others) wiki is not only about links,
but a whole lot about markup as well. In fact, I could live with a
non-wiki link mechanism as long as the markup was still there. If I
want something to be printed bold, I type **something** and don't care
about formatting shortcuts, menus or toolbars. And I don't want to
care. If I want to print **something** (with the stars kept) in-line
with my text, I have to resort to typing ''**something**'' and live
with the monospace. I cannot keep the same font if I wanted to.

It is not possible to fully satisfy 1) and 2) at the same time, but
introducing a way of escaping markup no matter where the parser picks
it up (e.g. by %% like dokuwiki), would make 1) and 2) possible. We
would only have to agree on whether Ctrl-V behaviour remains as-is or
is changed to "escaped paste", and give e.g. Ctrl-Shift-V the respective
other meaning.


-- 
Fabian Moser

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