Re: [Axiom-developer] RE: plone

[Bob McElrath]

Page, Bill address@hidden wrote:
> > The reason, I am asking is that we currently run Twiki at RISC,
> > but I am not so convinced whether it is better/worse than Zwiki
> > or MediaWiki. (It's a pain to learn just another wiki syntax...)
> 
> I have looked at Twiki, and used both MediaWiki and Moinmoin. I
> think all three of these now have optional LaTeX support.
> 
> https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/MathModePlugin
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_math_markup
> http://johannes.sipsolutions.net/Projects/new-moinmoin-latex

Some of these existed when I started looking at LatexWiki.  My
motivation was to create a syntax that was as close to true Latex as
possible.  I expected my physics collaborators would use it, and I
didn't want them to have to learn wiki syntax at all.  I always have
favored a pure, faux-latex enviroment which is essentially a wiki but
uses latex markup.  e.g. \begin{itemize}, {\bf ...} etc.

I've made stabs in this direction but never quite gotten something
finished.  I have an interesting piece of python that is a BNF parser
that does most of the above plus converts tex math the MathML.  It still
needs some work but I'd be happy to pass it off if that interests
someone.

> And they all could probably quite easily be adapted to interface
> with Axiom and other computer algebra packages the way that
> ZWiki/MathAction does now.
> 
> MediaWiki is famous because it is the software that runs Wikipedia.
> The Sage project is using Moinmoin possibly because it is written
> in Python which is also the implementation language for Sage. But
> Moinmoin does not use Zope so it is simpler in that respect.
> 
> The "wiki syntax" in all of these systems was originally intended
> to be very simple to use so as not to represent any barrier for
> new users, but this goal has in most cases been abandoned because
> it turns out that people do care about the format. Most of these
> systems have some form of "WYSIWYG page editing" which is supposed
> to be easy for new users to create nicely formatted pages. Moinmoin
> in particular has a very nice editor.  ZWiki has this as an option
> but I have turned it off because unfortunately it does not work
> properly with the LatexWiki embedded LaTeX commands.

I abhor the WYSIWYG editing...and I think it's a disaster for math.
Have you tried entering "2D formulas" in Mathematica or Maple?  It's a
HCI disaster.  You should also see ASciencePad::

    http://math.chapman.edu/~jipsen/asciencepad/asciencepad.html

which does have a WYSIWYG editor, and math input using ASCIIMathML.
(but the compatability of ASCIIMathML is far inferior to jsMath or the
LatexWiki approach which actually uses latex)

Let me quote my message from the TiddlyWiki list on this subject:

Udo Borkowski address@hidden wrote:
> I absolutely agree with you. I guess one way to achieve a better
> "end-user friendlyness" would be a different way to edit the tiddlers.
> Not typing wiki syntax but more a "WYSIWYG" kind of editing. Will be
> quite some work to program this, but people will love it. Thinks like
> the WikiToolbar is certainly a first step into that direction.

No no no no no no no.

M$ Word and their ilk have conditioned people to spend their lives
looking under toadstools and clicking on things.  They spend a lot of
their leves pulling hair out over "why won't this block left-align?!?!"
The inner workings are opaque.  Somehow this is deemed "easier".  I
could not more vehemently disagree.

Wiki is a fundamentally different philosophy that is closer in spirit to
markup languages such as latex, with the added bonus that there are no
error messages, it "just works", and the input is readable.

Such a thing could be created of course but it would not be a wiki.
Better to call it TiddlyWord and charge a lot of money for it's "ease of
use".  Of course it will be slow and crash a lot and be hard to get to
do what you want.  (Have you TRIED the WYSIWYG HTML editors out there?)
Fitting of the "Word" monkier...

Anyway, I have a radically different idea.  Not sure if I've expressed
it here before.  Maybe in that "Resizing editor" thread or the one about
tables...

Let's have a editor panel (textarea replacement) that uses the same kind
of tricks used by the WYSIWYG HTML editors, but instead make it *help*
you type wiki syntax, without interfering.  For instance, imagine after
typing '[[' it places a '|http://link]]' to the right of your cursor.
It's not real text.  You can type over it.  If you type ']]' it will
disappear.  Typing **bold** will do something similar, but in addition
it will partially mark-up so that **bold** appears in a bold font.
Typing some obvious alias for an unusual UTF-8 character (like ellipsis,
en-dash, curly quotes, etc) will insert that character.  Think of it as
a syntax-highlighting wiki editor, with a lookahead that anticipates
what the user is typing.  Things which clash with the wiki philosophy
(like tables) could be entered in a manner similar to that used by the
WYSIWYG editors.

There are two major mistakes of existing products:
1) Making the user click on a lot of crap
2) Making the user use arrow keys to navigate basic text entry.
    (Mathematica/Maple do this with formula input -- arrow key to get
    out of your superscript and back down to the main line)

Let's get radical here.  In my mind document editing is still largely an
unsolved problem.  We have an *interactive* wiki editor.  We don't have
to stick to the textarea like every wiki in existance.  Nor do we have
to be M$ Word!  We can do anything!  What would your ideal wiki editor
do?

--
Cheers,
Bob McElrath [Univ. of California at Davis, Department of Physics]

    A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. 
    - Dwight Eisenhower

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