Re: [cowiki-dev] [cowiki] Using AJAX for form validation

I suppose this is why syntax correcting compilers have never become 
practical.  Sigh. 

Using AJAX behind the scenes, we could at least flag errors like this.  
However I'm not sure this is the worst of our problems...  Don't spend 
time on it for now.

Archie Campbell wrote:

> For a purer sense of flexibility, we should allow bad wiki, in case 
> there was no other way to express ones self. Otherwise we invite 
> cumulative load-save errors-of-circumstance where a preview would have 
> alerted all but the most illiterate user. For example, a table is left 
> open, like so...
>
> <table>
> |-
> | I'm behaving well but
> | I'm going to forget to close this table
>
> ++ And on with the show...
>
> ...and how do we decide where to place the </table> closing element? 
> At which point (during a parse) does the corrective code kick in? Do 
> we walk the xml tree from the end to the beginning, looking-"ahead" 
> for the best place to make an assumption?
>
> Assumption is the mother of all fuckups; let's leave correction to 
> eyeballing a preview - the customer is always right.
>
> Regards,
>
> Archie
>
> PAUL HANCHETT wrote:
>
>> I think I understand what you're saying Archie, but I don't know that 
>> I agree.  There are quite a few elements that are required to be 
>> paired, if they aren't the text won't be interpreted at all.  Now, I 
>> suppose that we could add the missing elements to "correct" the markup...
>>
>> Archie Campbell wrote:
>>
>>> The thing with wiki markup is that the parser is required to accept 
>>> just about anything, whereas syntax-checking requires the entire 
>>> document to be grammatically defined. That is, the parser can't 
>>> declare an error at such-and-such a place without expecting a given 
>>> syntactic element at that place, which would restrict the set of 
>>> parsable wiki documents to those having a set grammatic structure.
>>>
>>> Bottom line... it can't be done. If it could be done, it would cause 
>>> all coWiki documents to be boring.
>>>
>>> Preview, on the other hand, would be fairly simple and wholly useful.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Archie
>>>
>>> PAUL HANCHETT wrote:
>>>
>>>> Using AJAX to validate the page seems like a reasonable use, 
>>>> especially if we can also use it to identify where the trouble spot 
>>>> is.  I think it would be a good thing because then we wouldn't have 
>>>> to save syntactically incorrect pages.
>>>>
>>>> I like the idea of offering a menu of valid links to insert.  Such 
>>>> a thing could also be used to validate links once they are entered...
>>>>
>>>> Using it for page maintenance also seems to make sense...
>>>>
>>>> Should we think about including a WYSIWYG editor as well?  Clearly 
>>>> it can be done...
>>>>
>>>> Daniel T. Gorski wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On 18 Jun 14:06, John (yt) Hogenmiller wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>  
>>>>>
>>>>>>On 6/18/05, Sy <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>    
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>  
>>>>>
>>>>>>>At the very least, AJAX lets bandwidth usage be much more intelligent.
>>>>>>>Sortof like what frames was supposed to do.  ;)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>      
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>Technically, AJAX (and methods like it) submit/retreive something
>>>>>>every time you exit a  form element.  But it's a very small amount
>>>>>>being submitted that typically, you barely notice.
>>>>>>    
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>At first I need to say that coWiki didn't require JavaScript so far. If you
>>>>>want to change this basically, make it good. Means: if you want to use JS
>>>>>someday and take it for granted for coWiki to work, you may replace some
>>>>>functionalities with JS directly. These may be e.g. already existing
>>>>>dialogues.
>>>>>
>>>>>Such (XML)-RPCs/requests like this AJAX (horrible name for an old
>>>>>technology) provides, make sense in at least two coWiki cases:
>>>>>
>>>>> a) The display of the tree if you want to move documents. To select the
>>>>>    target branch you may use XML-RPC to retrieve the subtree data to be
>>>>>    displayed. This would also scale in the case that the tree has > 10.000
>>>>>    nodes or such.
>>>>>
>>>>> b) If you have a smart textarea that displays an additionaly layer with
>>>>>    document name suggestions after you typed "((" or "[[" and a few
>>>>>    characters. I think I don't need to describe this functionality further.
>>>>>
>>>>>regards dtg
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>  
>>>>>