What kind of node tags do we need so that you can further customize the presentation of your nodes?
Please keep this to discussion on new tag ideas.
I can understand that maybe it'd get confusing if several nodes have links with the same label, so maybe it could display the name of the node the link is on in brackets next to it in the 'links' screen?
e.g: "Home [on TestNode]" or something like that.
This would really help the idea of shadow networks to work though in the Grid if the only reference to their existence was behind a custom link word. If you don't have access to what's on the other side of a series of links named "Rabbit Hole" you shouldn't even know what the name of that node is for direct connection.
You want to know the node name for where that link goes? View the source code for that node.
- For marking a chunk of a page. In normal view could add a horizontal-rule or something but for accessibility mode it might be able to add markers for screen readers to skip around more easily.
(Disclaimer, I am not a screen reader user so feel free to tell me I am wrong on some of my assumptions.)
#ordered-list / #unordered-list
- Again could maybe break things up in a way more friendly to screen readers. Ordered lists are also nice so that you don't have to edit numbering. The ability to add indentations under an unordered list might be nice (maybe like "-" for first level indent, "- -" for 2nd level indent, etc.)
Dynamic tags that I just think might be fun to have (mostly thinking of old internet stuff):
#music / #video – Think old Myspace pages or news articles. Something where you could have flavor text for an auto-playing piece of media.
#marquee – Similar to stuff like flickering signs in game, where it displays slightly differently each time the page loads. Flashing stuff.
#weather – Current weather report maybe?
#hit-counter – Node view counter. Again thinking of the old internet.
#rotating-message – A tag where you could make several different messages that it rotates through randomly each time the node is loaded. 1 line displayed out of the set each time the page is displayed.
#button – Maybe something that could trigger a daemon? Like making it possible for a daemon to monitor button presses on a node? This one is probably more far-fetched but I feel like there are probably some ways to make them more interactive for like an order form or a contact form (can do this with just giving a grid mail address of course, but for RP it sounds kind of fun to have a contact form or button.)
Headers: I don't know how to represent these given we can't change text size, or make things actually appear bold. Open to suggestions.
A horizontal rule would need to be --------------------- or __________________ as we can not do an actual HR tag.
#weather
sector
#endweather
That could be cool.
#rotating-message is a good one.
#button -- not something I have on the roadmap right now.
#marquee -- hmm, maybe. We can make flashing text, so that could be possible.
#ordered-list -- could make things easier
In HTML section and header tags have shortcuts for navigation. My thought was that in accessibility mode you might have explicit tags like [SECTION] added to the output, assuming screen readers can be configured to skip between them. But since it is not actually HTML, I'm not sure if that is something that would be helpful. For people who aren't using a screen reader it is easy enough to make your own "horizontal rule" with –-- or ___ like you showed. So in those cases I think it would just be a convenience thing.
It would be really cute if the #weather tag had a little ascii picture of a rain cloud/sun/lightning/etc.
Headers could maybe be done by just having them use the user's highlight-color.
It appears every node markup element (ads, boxes, the ad bar at the bottom of the screen, the node details at the top, etc) seems to have a different idea of how wide the Grid terminal is. With text outside of a text box, it'll even go as far as the player's maximum buffer width before wrapping. I think there should be a set "terminal width" for Gridterms that all these elements will adhere to, maybe adjustable by the user in the gridterm options menu. This would overall make things look a whole lot tidier and easier on the eyes, as you wouldn't have, for example, an ad banner directly above a two-box thing that seems to have a wildly different idea of how wide the screen is.
Now, onto my actual tag suggestion:
A #center tag! This would need to be an exception to the 'no nested tags' thing, of course, but it would be nice if we could center certain elements on nodes (according to the terminal width thing i previously mentioned), so we don't have to have our nicely-formatted pages which then just have a table looking all out of place stuck on the left hand side of the screen.
A center tag… I'm open to making a tag that lets you center text, but not a tag that centers the other tags. That's getting into some crazy shit in terms of line length and wrapping and other stuff that I'd really rather avoid. Having been a web developer in the early 2000s, I wish to stay away from the hell that is implementing something that centers other things on a page.
I do understand the desire for it, but we also have to keep nodes fairly simple to render to avoid lag and such.
I also recognize that different tags are different sizes. I might do a pass to make them all a uniform size in terms of the blocks, but other than that, I don't know that I want to deal with text wrapping, as everyone will have a different line length already on their client, and then on their term, and then in nodes? It's just... a lot. And will create display issues that I'd rather not deal with at this point.
If you need text on your node to wrap at a specific width, say 150 (which is the length of #ad and other tags) you can already put your text into a #text tag. It accepts many lines, and can be made to wrap at 150.
I don't want to enforce wrapping at any specific length at this time, though may consider it in the future, for now, you can use #text to wrap things.
