I'd recommend starting simple. Paragraph breaks are two carriage returns (Enter, Enter). Give the writers some ability to do bold, italic, etc. by using something that isn't html (I don't store html tags in text fields). For example +b+would make this bold-b-, or +i+would make this italic-i-. You can also have +c+ to center -c- and could do the same thing with +16+sizes-16- and +red+colors-red-
Then, when displaying the text, translate what they have into html. +b+ becomes <b> and -b- becomes </b>. +c+ become <div align="center"> and -c- become </div>, etc. Images are a bit different. I let them specify the content and order of images (uploaded with the content), but I have the script align them where appropriate (count the number of paragraphs, insert the images in between appropriately, alternating sides [right, left, right, etc.]). I find these simple things work for two reasons. First, authors are used to editors doing things with their text; think of a magazine or newspaper editing, cutting, putting in pictures, etc. Second, authors don't want to learn html any more than they want to learn page layout programs. Give them some basic formatting stuff and add more as needed. kind regards, bill Justin French wrote: > Hi all, > > I've been writing CMS's for years now, and at the moment, I find myself > looking for some breakthrough, or at the very least, a change in the > way I do things. > > Anyone can write a CMS to manage simple articles with a data structure > like: > > id > author > date_written > heading > body > keywords > description > publish_date > expires_date > > But, it still requires the writer to know a little mark-up > (p,b,h1,h2,i,a,img,etc) in order to create an article with multiple > paragraphs, sections, headings, images, etc, with well structured, > valid mark-up. > > So, I've started thinking about how this can be tackled. > > Idea #1 was to have an unlimited number of 'blocks' or 'objects' > *related* to an article, resulting in two tables: > > ARTICLE > id, author, date, title, keywords, desc, etc > > BLOCKS > id, articleid, heading, content, order, etc > > But the reality is that different types of pages will require different > types of blocks (some with headings, some with images, some with > captions, etc). On the surface, this seems either too big to tackle, > or too complex to expect the writer/contributor to grasp. > > I'd be really interested in hearing how any one else is tackling this > stuff, even if it is only remotely related to PHP. > > Justin -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
