zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[Christoph Zwerschke <cito@xxxxxxxxx>]

Am 03.03.2012 18:41, schrieb Dotan Cohen:
> And why would casual users know this?

Well, to be honest I don't think zim is intended for "casual" users and 
never will because it is not intended to be a "wysiwyg" editor. People 
who want that wysiwyg stlye should use applications like OneNote or 
Evernote or MyBase or MyInfo or MyNotesKeeper. The special thing about 
zim is that it knows wiki syntax, and knowing the basics of that syntax 
is simply required to use it. It's explained very well in the online 
help. The other special thing about zim is that edit and view mode are 
not separated. People who want that separation of modes should use 
applications like ConnectedText or WikidPad or RedNoteBook.

The fact that I don't need to switch between edit and view mode is what 
makes zim so unique, and that paradigm really should be kept. For 
instance, if you see a mistake or type on a page, you simply go and 
correct it. You don't need to switch to an edit mode, search for the 
place with the error there, fix it, and switch back to view mode.

But of course, this paradigm also has some disadvantages like the one 
you mention. I'm sure a lot can and will be done to attenuate these and 
make the tool even more usable. But you need to understand that they are 
somewhat inherent to the edit/view paradigm zim is using.

One thing that surely should be added is a way to easily switch the 
editor to "raw mode" where it does not do any rendering. It should not 
be understood or used as the default edit mode, but it may be sometimes 
useful to see or edit the raw version of a page.

> I see. Although I agree with your assessment that the data could be
> recovered, it is still lost for Zim users. You and I might be able
> to open the source file and retrieve the data. I would not expect
> that of the casual user. That is quite the reason that I think that
> it is a bit early to promote Zim to the casual user.

See above regarding "casual users". A raw editing mode could help, but 
even that might not be found or understood by a casual user. Just like 
copying the data with "Copy as... -> Wiki" to get the raw data.

> How about Python code, which maycontain triple quotes? Zim itself is
> written in Python.

But zim's triple quotes must be on a line for themselves, which rarely 
happens in Python snippets, and you can always indent your Python 
snippets to guarantee no triple quotes are at the beginning of a line. 
Also, Python normally uses triple double quotes for docstrings, not 
single quotes. So in reality, it's not much of an issue.

-- Christoph