From prstanley at ntlworld.com  Sun May 13 15:11:03 2007
From: prstanley at ntlworld.com (PR Stanley)
Date: Sun May 13 15:07:32 2007
Subject: [Haskell wikibook] Where is the Wikibook?
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513200507.01b62398@ntlworld.com>

Hi folks,
I've not looked at the Wikibook for quite sometime.  Now I'm having 
difficulty locating the wiki pages.  Have they been moved? If the 
wikibook is still in existence, could someone send me its URL please?
Thanks,
Paul

From eric.kow at gmail.com  Sun May 13 15:15:29 2007
From: eric.kow at gmail.com (Eric Y. Kow)
Date: Sun May 13 15:12:11 2007
Subject: [Haskell wikibook] Where is the Wikibook?
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513200507.01b62398@ntlworld.com>
References: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513200507.01b62398@ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <20070513191529.GD222@dewdrop.local>

Hi,

On Sun, May 13, 2007 at 20:11:03 +0100, PR Stanley wrote:
> I've not looked at the Wikibook for quite sometime.  Now I'm having 
> difficulty locating the wiki pages.  Have they been moved? If the 
> wikibook is still in existence, could someone send me its URL please?

It's still at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell

Best,

-- 
Eric Kow                     http://www.loria.fr/~kow
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9         Merci de corriger mon fran?ais.
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From prstanley at ntlworld.com  Sun May 13 15:48:27 2007
From: prstanley at ntlworld.com (PR Stanley)
Date: Sun May 13 15:44:51 2007
Subject: [Haskell wikibook] Using XHTML Elements in the Wikibook
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513203556.01b62d28@ntlworld.com>

Hello again
One of you chaps once told me that XHTML elements had no place in the 
Wikibook: the rationale being that everyone, regardless of his 
knowledge of mark-up languages, should be encouraged to contribute to 
the wiki text.
I'm wondering if a small amount of HTML tagging may not be such a bad 
idea considering the accessibility benefits.
What does the list think?
Cheers,
Paul

From apfelmus at quantentunnel.de  Mon May 14 18:06:13 2007
From: apfelmus at quantentunnel.de (apfelmus)
Date: Mon May 14 18:02:49 2007
Subject: [Haskell wikibook] Using XHTML Elements in the Wikibook
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513203556.01b62d28@ntlworld.com>
References: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513203556.01b62d28@ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <f2amg3$n3v$1@sea.gmane.org>

PR Stanley wrote:
> One of you chaps once told me that XHTML elements had no place in the
> Wikibook: the rationale being that everyone, regardless of his knowledge
> of mark-up languages, should be encouraged to contribute to the wiki text.
> I'm wondering if a small amount of HTML tagging may not be such a bad
> idea considering the accessibility benefits.
> What does the list think?

Hello Paul,

Wikibook pages can be viewed in several modes. For instance, the URL

 http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Recursion

shows the page in the standard viewing mode as proper HTML. But the URL

 http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Haskell/Recursion&action=edit

shows the page content in editing mode, the source code for the viewing
mode so to speak. This source code is written in the wiki mark-up
language which is aimed to be "simple" and is very different from HTML.
Thus, in principle the wiki mark-up wouldn't understand HTML. That being
said, the language fortunately recognizes a small number of HTML tags,
including <i>,<b>,<h1>,<p>,<span>,<code> and others, see also

  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Help:HTML_in_wikitext

Note that the most HTML tags duplicate existing mark-up functionality.
For example, one can now either use

  ''this text is italic''

or

  <i>this text is italic</i>

to get an italic font.
One tag that is not HTML but nevertheless recognized is <math> which
encloses LaTeX formatted formulas.


Personally, I don't like the wiki-style mark-up language too much, but
as the Haskell Wikibook is only a small user of the infrastructure
provided by the general Wikibooks project, we don't have much influence
on the markup language. I think that the official Wikibooks project
guideline is to favor wiki-style mark-up, but I don't mind if you use
the supported HTML tags for the page source code. It's not always easy
to properly nest them with the already existing wiki-style mark-up,
though, and can result in garbled output in the viewing mode. In
particular, I'd suggest to avoid the paragraph tags <p> if possible,
separating paragraphs by a single blank line is enough and gets
translated into appropriate <p> tags in the viewing mode.


In any case, just edit as you see fits. At worst, we'll re-format the
mark-up if the viewing output becomes garbled.


Regards
apfelmus

From eric.kow at gmail.com  Sat May 19 02:13:10 2007
From: eric.kow at gmail.com (Eric Y. Kow)
Date: Sat May 19 02:09:35 2007
Subject: [Haskell wikibook] Using XHTML Elements in the Wikibook
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513203556.01b62d28@ntlworld.com>
References: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513203556.01b62d28@ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <20070519061310.GB222@dewdrop.local>

On Sun, May 13, 2007 at 20:48:27 +0100, PR Stanley wrote:
> I'm wondering if a small amount of HTML tagging may not be such a bad 
> idea considering the accessibility benefits.

Could you clarify what you mean by accessibility benefits?

Thanks,

-- 
Eric Kow                     http://www.loria.fr/~kow
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9         Merci de corriger mon fran?ais.
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From prstanley at ntlworld.com  Sat May 19 10:55:44 2007
From: prstanley at ntlworld.com (PR Stanley)
Date: Sat May 19 10:51:43 2007
Subject: [Haskell wikibook] Using XHTML Elements in the Wikibook
In-Reply-To: <20070519061310.GB222@dewdrop.local>
References: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513203556.01b62d28@ntlworld.com>
	<20070519061310.GB222@dewdrop.local>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.0.20070519155458.01b65390@ntlworld.com>


> > I'm wondering if a small amount of HTML tagging may not be such a bad
> > idea considering the accessibility benefits.
>
>Could you clarify what you mean by accessibility benefits?
>
>Thanks,
Certainly. I am totally blind and therefore rely 
on a screen reader for keyboard access to and 
auditory feedback from the Operating system and 
software programs.  The screen reader is designed 
to function in an environment of standard and 
some lesser known HCI design practices.  The wide 
range of functionality with which the screen 
reader is equipped enables the user to maintain 
an acceptable degree of access in most 
situations.  Java is perhaps the only exception 
in this regard but even so there are possible 
solutions albeit they fall outside the confines of this discussion.
Modern screen readers offer a wide selection of 
navigation aids for surfing the increasingly 
choppy waves of the world wide web.  the average 
screen reader interprets a web page in accordance 
to its logical structural components, namely, 
headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, form 
elements, anchor elements and so on.  The user is 
thus able to move between these components with 
the associated navigation commands provided by the screen reader.
Of course, HTML elements alone are not enough to 
guarantee the minimum acceptable degree of 
accessibility of a web page.  The screen reader 
reformats the page into a single-column document 
with each HTML element displayed in block mode. 
In certain situations it even tries to find a 
sensible label for img elements which do not have 
an alt attribute. Yet, lousy design decisions 
will continue to pose insurmountable challenges.
Fortunately, the Haskell Wikibook is for the most 
part fully navigable; however, the inclusion of 
XHTML elements would increase accessibility hugely.
I hope this answers your question. If you like to 
learn more about screen readers please visit: www.gwmicro.com
Regards,
Paul

>--
>Eric Kow                     http://www.loria.fr/~kow
>PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9         Merci de corriger mon fran?ais.

From dmhouse at gmail.com  Sat May 19 12:16:38 2007
From: dmhouse at gmail.com (David House)
Date: Sat May 19 12:13:01 2007
Subject: [Haskell wikibook] Using XHTML Elements in the Wikibook
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.0.20070519155458.01b65390@ntlworld.com>
References: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513203556.01b62d28@ntlworld.com>
	<20070519061310.GB222@dewdrop.local>
	<7.0.1.0.0.20070519155458.01b65390@ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <ebe43d680705190916k2c061228k87d06313b439a10@mail.gmail.com>

On 19/05/07, PR Stanley <prstanley@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Fortunately, the Haskell Wikibook is for the most
> part fully navigable; however, the inclusion of
> XHTML elements would increase accessibility hugely.

But the Wiki markup is transformed to XHTML anyway; if you download
e.g. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell, that's pure XHTML, not Wiki
markup. What's the problem?

-- 
-David House, dmhouse@gmail.com
From prstanley at ntlworld.com  Sat May 19 13:20:31 2007
From: prstanley at ntlworld.com (PR Stanley)
Date: Sat May 19 13:16:20 2007
Subject: [Haskell wikibook] Using XHTML Elements in the Wikibook
In-Reply-To: <ebe43d680705190916k2c061228k87d06313b439a10@mail.gmail.com
 >
References: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513203556.01b62d28@ntlworld.com>
	<20070519061310.GB222@dewdrop.local>
	<7.0.1.0.0.20070519155458.01b65390@ntlworld.com>
	<ebe43d680705190916k2c061228k87d06313b439a10@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.0.20070519181022.01b67fd0@ntlworld.com>


>>I am not suggesting there's any problem. all I'm saying is that a 
>>more effective use of XHTML elements would increase 
>>accessibility.  for example, more headings, lists. Perhaps we could 
>>even use CSS if the wiki framework allows it.
The wikibook is, and I repeat, fully navigable for the most part but 
that shouldn't preclude us from striving for perfection.
Paul

>>Fortunately, the Haskell Wikibook is for the most
>>part fully navigable; however, the inclusion of
>>XHTML elements would increase accessibility hugely.
>
>But the Wiki markup is transformed to XHTML anyway; if you download
>e.g. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell, that's pure XHTML, not Wiki
>markup. What's the problem?
>
>--
>-David House, dmhouse@gmail.com

From eric.kow at gmail.com  Sat May 19 14:13:34 2007
From: eric.kow at gmail.com (Eric Y. Kow)
Date: Sat May 19 14:09:58 2007
Subject: [Haskell wikibook] Using XHTML Elements in the Wikibook
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.0.20070519181022.01b67fd0@ntlworld.com>
References: <7.0.1.0.0.20070513203556.01b62d28@ntlworld.com>
	<20070519061310.GB222@dewdrop.local>
	<7.0.1.0.0.20070519155458.01b65390@ntlworld.com>
	<ebe43d680705190916k2c061228k87d06313b439a10@mail.gmail.com>
	<7.0.1.0.0.20070519181022.01b67fd0@ntlworld.com>
Message-ID: <20070519181334.GA219@dewdrop.local>

Hi again,

Thanks for the clarification.  I do somewhat appreciate the inherent
difficulties that blind users may have accessing online material (my
office mate is also blind; he uses a refreshable braille device, and
navigates in a 1x40 window using the text browser Lynx).  Thanks for
reminding us that it is an important issue.

You might want to take this up with the wikipedia folks, as they are
a larger wikimedia foundation project and surely have more experience
with accessibility than wikibooks do.  For instance, here is a page
of wikipedia accessibility guidelines:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Accessibility

> The wikibook is, and I repeat, fully navigable for the most part but 
> that shouldn't preclude us from striving for perfection.

I think what David was asking was what explicit XHTML in the markup in
source would add in terms of accesibility benefits, since the wiki
syntax is automatically converted to XHTML anyway for browsing...

-- 
Eric Kow                     http://www.loria.fr/~kow
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9         Merci de corriger mon fran?ais.
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