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PmWikiPhilosophy-Talk

This is a talk page for improving PmWikiPhilosophy.

There are two additional principles that should be taken into account in the design of PmWiki. These strongly support the PmWiki Philosophy #1 so that a writer can expect PmWiki to support their use with orthogonal and economy of markup, and the writer's experience with related technologies such as PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript produces expected results where facets of these are exposed in PmWiki markup, templates, styles, and where possible recipes.

1. Principle of least surprise

The outcome of using PmWiki markup or features should be be one that is expected from previous usage and experience of similar occurrences in PmWiki, other wikis, or more generally.

• Wikipedia: Principle of least astonishment
• Applying the Rule of Least Surprise
• Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing
• Wiki: Principle Of Least Astonishment

2. Consistency

Where a feature markup is implemented in several places it should be consistent in both is syntax (the way it is expressed), its semantics (the way its expression in interpreted), and its outcome (what it does). The means it is easier to learn, and easier to use. This principle strongly supports the Principle of least surprise.