NewFeatures: Recent Entries For 2005/06/11

A DWiki page (technically, any wikitext, so comments too) can now start with the line '#pragma pre' to declare that the entire rest of the page is simply preformatted text and should be barfed out as such (minus the #pragma line, which is swallowed). '#pragma plaintext' is accepted too.

This is a much more convenient and maintainable way to stick plaintext files (such as program source or something) into a DWiki than indenting the entirity of their text one space.

Note that this does not make the page come out as text/plain. The page is still text/html and fully templated, it's just that the wikitext is one big <pre> lump, instead of more sophisticated formatting.

It's unlikely that DWiki will acquire any other sorts of pragmas (eg to say 'format this as nicely HTML-ized Python code'), partly because ChrisSiebenmann is dubious about the 'nicely HTML-ized' bit of any formatters since they invariably involve aesthetic decisions that people (eg, him) can and do object to. Having an easy way of including plaintext is the 80%-90% solution, and that is the DWiki way.