zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[Svenn Are Bjerkem <svenn.bjerkem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 22 June 2012 13:45, Rudi Bruchez <rudi@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Sounds strange in a wysiwyg environment not to show smth the user typed.
> What happens then if believe I've forgotten the @ an type it again ? would
> it store @@tag ?

Well, there's lots of magic happening when typing markup in zim. The
magic usually happens when the space is pressed, that way, you would
see the '@' in front of the tag/keyword while typing until space is
pressed to leave room for the next word. If you didn't want zim to
perform the magic, then press ctrl-z (undo) and the text is there in
unformatted format. At least that's what I do when I type file system
paths which I don't want zim to magicalize.

There is one particular magic that comes to my mind when it comes to
expected behaviour: The underline. When an underline is magicalized,
the text gets a yellow background instead of the expected underline.
Guess this has to do with the editor widget not showing underline or
something like that. The tags currently get an orange face colour when
magicalized. If the visible @ goes avay, at least the colour change
must stay. (I guess it is possible to configure the face colour to be
the same as the text colour for those who don't like colour).

>
> Personally I don't mind seeing the @ in front of my tags, at least in zim.
> Dropping it in the HTML export could make sense, though.

A tag should be made to stand out in some way, otherwise a casual
reader would think it is a typo, I think

>
> Le 22/06/12 11:51, Jaap Karssenberg a écrit :
>
>> So now my question: would it break the use case for tags if I drop the
>> "@" in the rendering ?  So we would still use the "@" in the wiki
>> source, we would still use it for typing tags, but formatted tags are
>> highlighted by color instead of the "@" prefix. Also in HTML export we
>> would drop the "@". The result being that tags being in a sentence
>> read more naturally.

That is only useful behaviour if the feature is to be used to generate
an index like in a book. Because of the '@' in a tag, I never use them
in a line of text, only at the beginning in the first line, alone, or
at the end of a single line statement.

@a_tag
This is a piece of text which is supposed to be a block of text describing
something which fits to something which I would later like to find by
clicking on
a_tag in the tag cloud. If I, at a later time find this passage of
text through the
search function and discover that it also need another tag, then I can
add that to the
tag line.

The literal @ stands out as an icon and catches attention, but so
would a different colour.

My other use case for tags is in diaries where I describe what I do to
approach a problem:

In a calendar/date page:
2012-06-22
Checking if make install works
* The Makefile use spaces instead of tabs at the beginning
Replace spaces with tabs and try again
* Package foobar installs nicely
Need to fix spaces to tabs before deployment @todo

John called and asked about the progress on the deployment. @followup

I know I can use the TODO functionality, but I am kind of reverse
polish notation when writing this kind of memo notes. First write,
then classify.

It is always difficult to rewrite already existing features. I have
come to learn and love the tags the way they are right now. Why not
find a different markup for keywords, say %keyword, ^keyword or
$keyword. Maybe the last one is a bad suggestion for all those who
take a note of prices in USD in their zim wikies.


I think it is a good idea to use the title of a calendar page in the index pane.
-- 
Svenn