[Mediawiki-l] what-you-see-is-what-you-get edit program?

Mon Mar 14 22:35:50 UTC 2005

On 14 Mar 2005, at 13:53, Rowan Collins wrote:

> Well, *extremely* early on in the development of wiki software, the
> choice was made to favour *simplicity*...
> you were just typing text with the odd CamelCaseLinkPattern in.

So let people enter plain text! What's wrong with that? Why must EVERY 
USER be a graphic artist? (I assure you, they are not!)

With the exception of [[square brackets]] instead of CamelCase, one can 
use MediaWiki in pretty much the same way as one uses c2.com, no?

The only exception I can bring to mind is if unsophisticated users are 
interested in correcting typos in heavily-marked-up text. And if that's 
the case, nothing short of a full WYSIWYG authoring environment is 
going to do the job. (Those who are seeking "full WYSIWYG", take a look 
at GoLive or Dreamweaver. Do you really want to turn THAT loose on your 
unsophisticated users?)

Page authors should either assume THEY are going to be doing 95% of the 
maintenance, on they should KISS the complications goodbye, and make it 
inviting for less sophisticated users.

:::: Sell your cleverness, and purchase bewilderment -- Rumi
:::: Jan Steinman <http://www.Bytesmiths.com/Item/99-6313-15>