Subject:
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Re: markup syntax for member pages
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Thu, 1 Jul 1999 02:56:54 GMT
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Viewed:
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383 times
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Regarding the comments for a markup language:
I'm no genius and I learned the most basic HTML 1.0 in about 15 seconds. I
think it is very easy to understand and completely intuitive. Why would I
want to learn another markup language? A proprietary one at that...
Oh well, I suppose I will have to invest another 15-20 seconds of my life
learning how to make my LUGNET page look spiffy ;)
John Matthews
Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote in message
news:377aa505.10682546@lugnet.com...
>
> Hiya,
>
> Here are a few details on LUGNET member pages... Nothing in just stone • yet,
> but that's why this is being posted. Looking for opinions on how useful
> this sounds to you...
>
> --
>
> Member pages on LUGNET will initially be text-based. Someday if we ever
> have a herd of servers and infinite bandwidth and a room full of lawyers,
> maybe we could do a full real hosting kind of thing like geocities does,
> where you get a big hunk of disk space for whatever HTML and images you • want
> to throw up... But for the forseeable horizon, text-only is the way to • go.
>
> But that's OK, because places like geocities and tripod, etc. give all of
> that for free, and you can always just link to those.
>
> The jist of LUGNET member pages: Encapsulate the following voluntarily
> contributed information in a more permanent venue than news:
>
> - personal info/bios
> - stories/creative writing
> - rants/spews
> - lists of sites, with or without commentary
> - organized or unorganized hyperlinked information
> - want lists/trade lists/etc.
> - etc.
>
> To me, at first this sounds most useful to someone who doesn't yet have a
> real homepage than to someone who does, but there are a couple nice things
> here with this, even for old hands, because you don't have to compose • pages
> using HTML:
>
> 1. It'll be super-easy to update content. Much easier than editing
> HTML. And it's an edit-live methodology -- you click an edit • button
> and make changes in a form box, and click Submit, and presto! the
> changes are instantly made.
>
> 2. The markup methods (the stuff that modifies plain text to make
> special text) aren't HTML but something much simpler, easier to
> learn, and much less error prone.
>
> 3. It'll be super-easy to make hyperlinks to other pages and have • those
> links automatically displayed as titles rather than pure URLs. • That
> is, if you give a URL http://www.snorb.org/gorch.html, then the • link
> won't show up as that URL, but instead as "Snorb's Fine Gorches."
> (This won't happen 100% magically, but in many cases it will. The
> more links the system learns over time, the more titles it can show
> automatically).
>
> 4. 90% or more of all the text that gets typed this way will probably
> end up being personal pages, but some of it will go into common,
> shared areas which represent a group or hierarchy, etc. -- for
> example, the .trains group might want to maintain a helpful intro
> page or pages for people who stop by at the /trains/ URL.
>
> Anyway, I wanted to toss out some ideas on the syntax (markup) for the • text,
> because even though it'll be text-only, it doesn't always have to be • purely
> boring plain text.
>
> --
>
> Other than HTML, three or four popular text-markup systems come to mind.
> I'm not sure where they all came from, but for one reason or another they
> have stood out in my mind over the years.
>
> The Not-HTML The Corresponding HTML Comments
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- • --
> See I<Spot> run. See <I>Spot</I> run. italics
> See B<Spot> run. See <B>Spot</I> run. boldface
> See I<B<Spot>> run. See <I><B>Spot</B> run</I>. italics & • boldface
> SECT<Spot Drinks Blood> <H3>Spot Drinks Blood</H3> section header
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- • --
> See \i{Spot} run. See <I>Spot</I> run. italics
> See \b{Spot} run. See <B>Spot</I> run. boldface
> See \i{\b{Spot} run}. See <I><B>Spot</B> run</I>. italics & • boldface
> \sect{Spot Drinks Blood} <H3>Spot Drinks Blood</H3> section header
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- • --
> See (i Spot) run. See <I>Spot</I> run. italics
> See (b Spot) run. See <B>Spot</I> run. boldface
> See (i (b Spot) run). See <I><B>Spot</B> run</I>. italics & • boldface
> (sect Spot Drinks Blood) <H3>Spot Drinks Blood</H3> section header
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- • --
> See ''Spot'' run. See <I>Spot</I> run. italics
> See '''Spot''' run. See <B>Spot</I> run. boldface
> -n/a- See <I><B>Spot</B> run</I>. italics & • boldface
> '''Spot Drinks Blood''' <H3>Spot Drinks Blood</H3> section header
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- • --
>
> I think all of those have been proven usable in real-world applications, • but
> none of them gets me very excited for the purpose of member pages. • They're
> either not intuitive enough, or too structured. So I'm thinkin' something
> more like this:
>
> The Not-HTML The Corresponding HTML Comments
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- • --
> See {Spot} run. See <I>Spot</I> run. italics
> See [Spot] run. See <B>Spot</I> run. boldface
> See {[Spot] run}. See <I><B>Spot</B> run</I>. italics & • boldface
> [[Spot Drinks Blood]] <H3>Spot Drinks Blood</H3> section header
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- • --
>
> The reason I like it is because it seems intuitive, friendly, relatively
> easy to type, and because normal text rarely uses [, ], {, }, <, and >.
>
> Now, what's shown above there is only { } and [ ] ... That leaves < > for
> hyperlinks!
>
> I'm thinking it ought to be possible to write things like
>
> Foo foo foo blah blah blah <http://www.snorb.org/gorch.html> wubba • wubba
>
> and
>
> Foo foo foo </loc/dk/> blah blah blah
>
> and
>
> Foo foo foo <gonk> blah blah blah
>
> and let the server do all the hard work of figuring out what to actually
> display for those. In the first case, it would know (because someone has
> already told it, or it would ask you) what the gorch.html page on
> www.snorb.org is. In the second case, that's a server-relative URL, so it
> would just go fetch the name of that page -- Danmark (Denmark) the • country,
> since that is the server-local URL of the lugnet.loc.dk newsgroup • homepage.
> In the third case, that's a directory-relative URL, and it would refer to
> another page named "gonk" in the member's personal-page directory.
>
> (By the way, the use of [], {}, and <> as markup characters doesn't
> necessarily preclude them from being used in bodies of text. If they ever
> really are needed, they could be written easily enough using so-called
> "escape" sequences -- \[, \], \{, \}, \<, and \>. And then of course \\
> means \, but that's relatively advanced given the most common compositions
> of text.)
>
> Other than that, there's not really much needed, except lists and maybe • some
> kind of block-quote-style indenting or (maybe maybe maybe -- tab-separated
> tables).
>
> Unordered lists could go like this:
>
> * First list item
> * Second list item
> * Third and final list item
>
> in that if the system sees lines that begin with space characters followed
> by an asterisk, it could easily convert them to this HTML code when
> displaying the page:
>
> <UL>
> <LI>First list item
> <LI>Second list item
> <LI>Third and final list item
> </UL>
>
> Similarly, ordered (numbered) lists could go like this:
>
> + First list item
> + Second list item
> + Third and final list item
>
> and that would be automagically converted to this HTML code:
>
> <OL>
> <LI>First list item
> <LI>Second list item
> <LI>Third and final list item
> </OL>
>
> and would come out on the screen as:
>
> 1. First list item
> 2. Second list item
> 3. Third and final list item
>
> --
>
> Welp, those are some thoughts. It could be made more complex than that, • if
> necessary, or use a different markup paradigm, but this is how things are
> currently leaning.
>
> On Sunday I made a little prototype of a parser/converter that converts
> paragraph-based text in this format to HTML on-the-fly. It was fairly
> straightforward, which was encouraging, because it needs to stay very • simple
> for the human aspect. The parser doesn't do intelligent expansion/
> substitution of <>'s yet, but that's just a SMOP, and it's independent of
> the syntax.
>
> --
>
> Anyone know of any alternative markup possibilites worth considering? Any
> success stories? Horror stories?
>
> --Todd
>
> [Followups to lugnet.admin.general]
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: markup syntax for member pages
|
| (...) If HTML were chosen, then not only would it require a full-blown HTML parser/ validator to prevent garbage like <TABLE BORDER=8 CELLPADDING=10 BGCOLOR="#FF0000"><TR><TD> <FONT COLOR="#00FF00" SIZE="+4"><B> <BLINK>THIS IS MY <BIG>COOL</BIG> (...) (25 years ago, 1-Jul-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | markup syntax for member pages
|
| Hiya, Here are a few details on LUGNET member pages... Nothing in just stone yet, but that's why this is being posted. Looking for opinions on how useful this sounds to you... -- Member pages on LUGNET will initially be text-based. Someday if we (...) (25 years ago, 1-Jul-99, to lugnet.admin.general, lugnet.general)
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