[Wikipedia-l] Re: Extension syntax vote begins

Thu Apr 8 06:26:52 UTC 2004

On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 12:57:50AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> David Friedland wrote:
> 
> >Timwi wrote:
> >
> >>There is no other way I can imagine that people seriously prefer 
> >><math>x^2</math> over simple-and-quick [!x^2!] or [$x^2$] or whatever. 
> >>Except for <rend type="math">, *all* proposed syntaxes are better than 
> >><math>.
> >
> >The reason that non-savvy users might prefer <math>x^2</math> is that it 
> >requires understanding the concept of markup, a concept which most 
> >people learn in the context of HTML, and the very first thing you learn 
> >when you attempt to learn HTML is that things are enclosed in things 
> >that look like <something> </something>.
> 
> Which is also why we use <b>...</b> instead of ''', <a> instead of 
> [[...]], <li> instead of *, etc.?

If we would use math as often as ''this'' then I would definitely vote
against long tags. But we use them rarely, and it's good that they're more
descriptive that way. Often used contructs shall be short because we use
them every day.

(Offtopic: as far as I remember '' isn't equal to <i> but <em>.)

grin