May 30th, 2002 ++NiiloNeuvo#

Long parameters to plugins.#

After thinking about how to make the perfect image viewer or the HTML-plugin that was discussed in WikiMarkupDevelopment it turned out that providing a long list of parameters to a plugin is difficult.

Consider this (again experimenting with a nicer plugin model):

<<MyPlugin param1=42 param2="fish" MULTILINE>>
All
This
Stuff
Is
Given
As
The
Argument
Multiline
<<>>

This may be kinda difficult. Is there a real need to do something like that?

--JanneJalkanen

If this is done you don't have to worry about raw HTML at all. That is probably the biggest immediate gain.

--NiiloNeuvo

I'm sorry - I don't see how this helps at all. Could you elaborate?

--JanneJalkanen

Having a plugin that handles raw HTML would be easy to do. Thus eliminating the need to worry about raw HTML altogether.

--NiiloNeuvo

No. The problem about allowing HTML is that it allows people to create a Wiki that harms the viewers. Making a plugin means that people can now write HTML to the page anyway - except that it's much more cumbersome than just simply not replacing every '<' and '>' with their HTML equivalents.

--JanneJalkanen

Multi-line plugin arguments are now available in v1.9.30 onwards. Functionality is not complete, though. --JanneJalkanen

OK. This functionality will be in 1.9.31, in the form:

[{MyPlugin param1=value1
param2=value2
param3=value3

everything that is written in the body,
  separated from the parameters using a single, empty line
     will be passed on to the plugin
        as is, no substitutions.

Including empty lines.
}]

Good? Now someone can easily create their favourite HTML plugin... :-)

--JanneJalkanen, 06-Nov-2002