On 6/26/06, Rob Church <robchur(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
It would be somewhat trivial to expand the
extension to allow
customising the class output according to the tag used; if another use
case pops up, we can add another tag and class combination.
That seems to be the strongest argument for making a generic tag
wrapped in a template to set the class. Currently, if a user at fooboo
wiki wants to get the behaviour of <poem> for something that isn't a
poem, their choices are:
1) Wrap it in <poem> anyway, defeating the whole point of semantic mark up.
2) Attempt to imitate it by implementing something that doesn't quite
work as well with templates.
3) Attempt to hack the mediawiki source code to copy <poem>, making
something nonportable.
4) Attempt to convince the MediaWiki developers of the validity of
their "use case" and wait for it to get implemented.
5) Wrap <poem> in a <div class="foo">, store that in a template,
carry
out step 4) and reimplement the template with a clean new tag.
Speaking as a general non-technical user I would have no compunctions
about using the <poem> tag wherever it works, including recipes and
other non-poetic circumstances.
The average user is intersted in what works, not just the satisfaction
of the arcane technical aesthetics of IT specialists.
Ec