On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Samuel Klein <meta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Stephanie writes: > > Layouts would be a new form of template, designed to apply as a > > block-level outline to an article, providing both a framework to build a > > particular type of article, and defining the formatting for that article > in > > a manner that templates and article markup would no longer be permitted > to > > do. It's likely that layouts would be treated like highly used templates > and > < the interface itself... one to an article, so the interface to > select one would > > probably be just selecting it from a dropdown or typing it's name. > > I really like the idea of separating article text, local templates, > and page-wide layout. I don't know if 'three different paresers' are > needed, but just being able to define a stylesheet for a named layout > would save time and frustration. I say 3 different parsers because the effort is as much about restricting what wikitext can be used where as it is about simplifying the templates and layouts, and breaking up the parser in this manner is a straightforward way to keep "ugly" markup out of articlespace. If you make it so the complicated code that would render an editor hopelessly broken can't directly appear in an article, you keep the ability to use that code appropriately by template transclusion. I suggested layouts as an extension of that concept, because with layouts you can make it so HTML/CSS hacks that could negatively affect formatting can be left to a process that is more likely to be tested - there's no reason for every article to have it's own custom CSS positioning and such - those decisions are better done at a site level where they can be done consistently and with consideration for things like screen readers, mobile devices, and print output, something that most editors don't even need to understand. The point is to "dumb down" the both the required interface and the underlying by only having what you need to write articles available. Advanced editors could continue to develop templates for structured data, and collaborations between experts would do the really dicey stuff to make the site look pretty. The only (immediate) changes to templates required would be a little extra "glue" to give a WYSIWYM or WYSIWYG editor "hints" about how a template works - whether the template produces a block or an inline element, and what parameters it takes so that the editor can display a nice easy to edit form to fill those parameters while showing the user what they do. Layouts would likely have a lot more bolted on to them than is currently possible, because you actually want to define a structure for an article, with editable regions - they'd likely be a cross between a stylesheet, a DTD, and a template by the time we got done implementing them. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
