[pmwiki-users] FAQ broken in latest upgrade

[Marc Cooper]

Patrick R. Michaud said...
> On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 08:22:24PM +0100, Marc Cooper wrote:
> > Patrick R. Michaud said...
> > > On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 03:21:38PM +0100, Marc Cooper wrote:
> > > > I just applied v2.1.10 to v.2.1.7 and noticed that the FAQ is broken.
> > > 
> > > Could you give a specific example of what is "broken"?
> > 
> >     http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/FAQ?skin=notsosimple
> > 
> > Ugh!
> 
> This is a case where I'm going to blame the skin and not PmWiki.
> Frankly, IMO the notsosimple skin is not well designed from a CSS
> perspective -- it forces tables to be 100% width and sets zero
> margins on headings (and there are several other items I disagree 
> with).  So, the fact that the headings don't render well in this 
> particular page I see as a skin flaw and not a PmWiki flaw.

Thanks for the detailed replay, Patrick.

Sure, and as I mentioned in another thread, I've fixed all that nonsense 
:-) However, we aren't here to critique skins, and you did ask for 
examples and while the default notsosimple is flawed in many ways, it 
does exhibit the problem - which is why I mentioned it.

... and a few other skins.

> (I've often wanted to rewrite NotSoSimple so that it has an identical
> look while using a more straightforward CSS and being more compatible
> with the way PmWiki expects skins to act... just haven't had time
> to do it.)

Well, it'd be daft for you to repeat my work. Once I'm done, I'll pass 
it on and we can beat each other senseless over over the minor details.
 
> > But also see:
> > 
> > http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/FAQ?skin=gemini
> > http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/FAQ?skin=soma
> > http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/FAQ?skin=monobook
> 
> The headings in soma definitely look odd, but monobook and gemini 
> both look okay to me -- what in particular do you not like about those?  

Well, it depends which browser you use to view them. And that's a part 
of the problem, of course.

Having read the rest of your reply, and fixed most things with 
.fpltemplate, I'm happy with my result, but I think that there is an 
issue that's worth a discussion.

Some CSS classes are, in effect, embedded within PmWiki (e.g. faq and 
markup, and extra, which is harder to spot; used but not defined). I 
believe that these should be a bit more visible. It's not a problem 
overriding these classes, once you know about them, but seemingly odd 
things happens when you don't, until you uncover them.

I agree with you comments below - that CSS should be managed by the 
skin.

My concern - relatively minor, though - is that should more "embedded" 
CSS classes be introduced, that they will "break" more skins, and thus 
sites. I understand that the skin can be fixed, and that the fault can 
be placed there, but there is a risk, and a mitigation strategy is not a 
bad thing, imo.

> Is it the fact that some headings have links and therefore are
> not in the same typography as the non-linked headings?  
> 
> Again, I'd point to that as being a skin decision and not
> a PmWiki one.  I just can't see it as "abnormal" in the web
> that a heading might contain a link to another place.

It's not so much a technical issue as a presentation issue. A keystone 
of publishing is consistency, anything odd distracts the eye. That's 
fine when that's the aim, but horrible when it isn't. Hence my desire to 
make the stuff being generated by

 (:pagelist trail=PmWiki.DocumentationIndex "[[#faq]]" fmt=#includefaq:)

look identical to the rest of the text. That's very important to me - it 
won't be for others, I appreciate that. Technically, I know that I can 
this once I understand what's going on.

> > because they don't have a consistent class with which to reference the 
> > "wikilink"s - not that this is ideal.
> 
> Sure they do.  Just use a selector like
> 
>     div.fpltemplate h2 { ... }

Yup. Thanks for that. Missed it myself.

> And even with all of the above, I'm not at all adverse to adding
> a default class='...' parameter to the (:pagelist:) markup
> in PmWiki.FAQ, or adjusting the #includefaq template to
> add more classes to the output, if it'll make things
> substantially easier to style.

Proving one understand CSS syntax - not everyone is confident with, such 
as, 

    div.faq p.question a { ... }
    div.fpltemplate h2 a.wikilink { ... }
and their use is hardly obvious without knowing the background - then 
what you have provided seems to be sufficient. But I don't think that 
adding classes to individual items is a bad idea.

> But I think we should also consider the issue from the
> "entire site/skin" perspective, as opposed to trying to just fix
> the faq.

I wholeheartedly agree.

-- 
Best,
Marc