Tuesday Rant XIV
Tuesday Rant XIV
From the desk of pieterh
Via the could-not-send-email department, on 1256632126|%e %B %Y, %H:%M
It's Tuesday here and in the northern hemisphere the trees are losing their foliage, and winter is arriving faster than bad news. But thankfully, there's always a place and a time to complain and that's here, today, on the Tuesday Rant.
Today, complaints about the weather (or lack of it, if you live off-planet), and anything Wikidot related. I'll start the ball rolling by complaining that Hotmail keeps rejecting emails from Wikidot.com, making it really hard for people to register. Hotmail, what's up with that?
Comments: 52
page_revision: 2, last_edited: 1256633992|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z (%O ago)
Getting tired of these quotes in my forums
If you use the Forum Template, you can change the appearance of threads. Just add a "files" button in an obvious place and you've solved your problem! :)
For example, on this page: http://editor.wikidot.com/thread:package-installer-used-to-create-the-forum, I have two buttons, one for "edit" and one for "files", as I've hidden the page options intentionally.
— Shane, Wikidot.com Community Admin
Good idea! I think I may do this as well. It's always the simple things…
tHEdODGYmONKEY
Projects: Riki: the wiki for R | Have My CV .com | UrCheatz.com | Monodot-Template | Cocktails | Modern Warfare 2 Wiki
Argh…
Tired to be obliged to write
instead of this
to see:
Duplicate of weneed:9
my Tuesday rant is that the other day when i was making a pretty nice CSS using firebug, when i copied it to put it on my website, firebug decided to copy so completely random theme to the clipboard instead of the one i was working on. so now i lost all my work :(
I wish I could link to an internal page on my WikiDot site and use some sort of keyword (maybe %%title%%) to put the page title (not the unix-name) as the link text. Sometimes my page titles are not the same as the unix-name and I'm having to type them in as the link text. A keyword for this seems logical. If this has been done already I haven't heard of it.
This can be done! :) Just do this:
Not typing any link text will automatically use the page's title instead :) Just remember to add the pipe | symbol in there
— Shane, Wikidot.com Community Admin
OMG! I didn't know that! Wow! Thanks!
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
I keep forgetting the aforementioned syntax for an internal page link and look up some other page. I wish that there was a button in the editor for this like we have for URL/Images etc.
Edit: I see that there is indeed a page link button. When did it appear? I must be going blind :-)
Suresh Govindarajan
http://sgovindarajan.wikidot.com
James! I cannot believe it! YOU didn't know about this? Wow. So, actually there IS something I know and you don't know… :D I am so proud of myself… :P
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell
Well done Brunie!
On second thought… you knew about this all along? And you didn't tell me??? Hmph.
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
I did not know this either; I assumed such a thing would develop a space as a link. This is very awesome!
EDIT: Well, there's my "antirant" for the day…
— Blog ~ Life's Handbook
Wow, didn't realise you weren't aware of this James :) I'm as shocked as Brunhilda is!
— Shane, Wikidot.com Community Admin
Hmmm. Sounds like sarcasm to me but that's just how my British brain deciphers this sort of comment :)
tHEdODGYmONKEY
Projects: Riki: the wiki for R | Have My CV .com | UrCheatz.com | Monodot-Template | Cocktails | Modern Warfare 2 Wiki
No sarcasm intended, I was being serious!
It's funny how different cultures can have different interpretations from the same sentence.
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
Well, I'm British and I didn't think you were being sarcastic, James. :-)
Sue
Serious! He was being serious!
Lots of internet wars started just because there were too many exclamation marks.
A key to successful low-bandwidth communication is to filter out all emotional content and never take anything personally. But we all get it wrong regularly…
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
I also was almost certain that you were kidding. But maybe the Finnish and British brain are similar on that area. I just love the dry British humour: Black Adder, Men Behaving Badly and Keeping Up Appearances were absolutely hilarious. Sadly all they show today is reality-tv (I got enough reality in my own life…)
___TTT___/ http://www.trumpetexercises.net
(_|||_) \ - Janne
Ok, maybe the Finnish and British male brain are similar then…
___TTT___/ http://www.trumpetexercises.net
(_|||_) \ - Janne
You're right! It was the exclamation marks that were misleading!
Although, the use of periods may also provide a sarcastic undertone:
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
Well, I'm British (naturalized) and perhaps because I know James, the notion of sarcasm never even crossed my mind. Enthusiasm, and joy, yes.
Probably in this case we have Will thinking, "c'mon, James could not possibly not know about that, so he must have been sarcastic, yes, look at those exclamations, aha!"
Nationality and gender have nothing to do with it.
Sorry to be a bore. Was studying the psychology of developmental communication and emotional disorders last night. It's all! About! Exclamation! marks!
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
What's OMG for ?
gerdami,
Belgian kidder.
OMG = Oh My God
Usually used to emphasise shock… despite the religious reference, most people who use this phrase aren't talking about their debt to God… (geddit? "owe my God"…)
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
LOL.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
My weather rant is that it is raining.
My wikidot rant is that there is no mobile web app for the chatroom.
"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;" ~ 1 Peter 3:16
OK, so maybe 5 is OK for free accounts. But only 10 for Pro Lite? And 20 for Pro? Unlike other features, the membership limit on such sites are a "make-or-break" issue.
I think Pro Lite should get at least 15-20, and Pro 50-100. Or even more lenient than that.
If you want to create more sites, feel free to send me a PM :) I was given SuperGuru powers, which includes a limit of 1000 sites.
As long as your site isn't private… and you're not going to just leave it sitting there using up a domain name… I'd be happy to let you use one of my slots :)
— Shane, Wikidot.com Community Admin
This isn't a site limit—it's the number of members you allowed to access your private wiki. Perhaps your sites are also allowed more members, but that's not the point. I just think a paying customer should be given a bit more for their money on this feature.
And if this were an "important" site, it would be best not to rely on the largesse of friends
But thanks for the offer!
I guess you've seen weened:30, one of mine.
I'd like to remove all limits on private wikis but the problem is they will get used for illicit purposes. So one option might be to increase membership size but reduce to almost zero the space for files.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
OMG OMG OMG!
In forum comments and wiki pages, you can't have a space, or newline (or a bunch of them), as the first character.
If you do the following source code on a page:
The Wikidot Engine automatically removes the first space FROM THE SOURCE CODE !
WHY???
You may be wondering why this is a problem?
KANJO
KANJO
ARGH! WHY????
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
I just looked over the plans again — is there a limit on extra access to private sites? Because if not, or if it's set high, that would be an easy way to achieve 'increasing membership but reducing file relevance' — admin can set up site permissions so that extra-access users can write/edit pages on the site as readily as anyone else, but there's nothing you can do to let them view/use files as far as I've been able to tell. Admittedly I haven't explored this to much extent.
Edit: This was a reply to pieterh, not James. I think I started writing in the default box instead of actually hitting 'reply'!
On simple tables, it is impossible to do both an alignment AND title the cell.
You can do:
or
but not both
— Blog ~ Life's Handbook
Unless I've misinterpreted what you want to do, this certainly seems possible to me:
I meant align the title to the right. (or left)
— Blog ~ Life's Handbook
That wasn't clear from your post.
You could always add this to your custom CSS although it would affect all your simple tables:
Wrap the table in a classed div, and then set the CSS style only for that div's class.
That'll keep it from affecting every table everywhere.
I don't like either of those solutions, because the point of the Wikidot Simple table is that its simple to change… you should be able to change alignment on a per-cell basis, and the above CSS solutions mean that ALL titles in the table are aligned left/right.
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
:-) It was clear to me, and I do agree that it's poor design to allow option A or option B but not options A and B, when they clearly make sense combined.
I'm making an issue for this.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
I would not spend resources (for now) on these simple tables when we have the [[table]]s…
Except for the fact that, as far as I know, column spanning isn't yet supported on [[table]]s. (And it would be nice to get row spanning as well.)
You made a point!
He made a good point actually. Why doesn't column span or row span work in the [[table]]s? It should work like so:
Which would render:
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
If I write a sentence with one part in italics:
And then try to wrap the whole in italics:
Then what comes out is broken: I told her, "I //really like my mum's cooking!//"
That sucks!
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
In theory, what you have done should work differently:
I told her, "//I //really// like my mum's cooking!//"
Which in turn should render:
The reason that it doesn't work like this is because the BOLD (**), ITALIC (//), UNDERLINE (__) and STRIKETHROUGH (--) syntax symbols can't have a space between it and the "affected" character:
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
You know, one thing that really irks me is that strikethrough uses the same indicator (--) as the em-dash.
Most people do not put spaces around their em dashes—like this. But as long as there's only one in a paragraph, it works.
Butif you end up using morelike this, you get a mess.
This is exacerbated by the fact that wiki syntax does not have support for HTML entities like — or the extremely useful
Funny you say that… I always do put spaces around my em dashes — not because of the Wiki engine, but because I think it looks tidier and less squashed together
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
Yes, but it's typographically wrong.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
True :(
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
From Wikipedia: Dash:
So, both styles are in active use.
One thing about setting it "open" is that this allows a line break before it, which I think looks very "wrong".
Agreed! It's also annoying that ---- is a line, so works differently than **** and ////.
Strikethrough should use a different syntax, maybe \\.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Is strikethrough used frequenly enough that it warrants a magic syntax? Of course, it's too late now…
As an idea for a new kind of tag, I might like to see something that can quickly do [[span class="XXX"]] and maybe the same for div. Of course, this is probably because I use classes a lot. For example: [[span.XXX this text is wrapped in a span]] would make authoring using styles heavily much easier.