wiki table formatting broken

[Robert Rossmair <r.rossmair@…>]

I just updated my trac installation (was some earlier Trac 0.12 release) to Trac 0.12multirepos-r8747. To my dismay, table formatting is now seriously messed up when empty cells are present. Look at this:

table containing empty cells; non-empty cells are filled with (<row>, <column>) text:

(1, 3)
(2, 1)	(2, 2)
(3, 1)	(3, 3)

same table, but "empty" cells now each contain a space character:

		(1, 3)
(2, 1)	(2, 2)
(3, 1)		(3, 3)

What makes this worse is that the WYSIWYG-Plugin (the only means to reasonably deal with complex tables) will remove space characters from table cells if they are not enclosed by printable characters.

The attached image file shows how the above table source code appears on my system.

[Remy Blank]

Yes, this is by design. Having more than one separator || without at least a space in-between makes the following cell span more columns. See #1293 and [8698] for more details.

[Robert Rossmair <r.rossmair@…>]

I see. Two problems with that: It's not backward compatible, and, more serious, the ​TracWysiwygPlugin, even in its latest revision, uses the old syntax. This makes it impractical to handle complex tables.

Suggestion: Make an ini-Option to handle it the old way.

Personally, I'll switch back to a revision without this feature.

[Remy Blank]

Replying to Robert Rossmair <r.rossmair@…>:

It's not backward compatible

That's the trouble with progress: you sometimes have to break something to be able to move forward.

the ​TracWysiwygPlugin, even in its latest revision, uses the old syntax. This makes it impractical to handle complex tables. Suggestion: Make an ini-Option to handle it the old way.

No, sorry, we just can't add a new configuration option for every new feature that could possibly break a plugin. Other suggestion: fix the TracWysiwygPlugin. This is probably quite easy, as the only change required is to add a space in empty cells. That change would even be backward-compatible with 0.11.

This is not meant to be an attempt to move the blame to somebody else. We have broken backward compatibility to some extent with this change. But it's the price to pay if we want to keep Trac moving. Moreover, this is a good opportunity to integrate the new WikiFormatting functionalities into the plugin: column-spannig cells (#1293) and header cells (#3347).

[Robert Rossmair <r.rossmair@…>]

That's the trouble with progress: you sometimes have to break something to be able to move forward.

the ​TracWysiwygPlugin, even in its latest revision, uses the old syntax. This makes it impractical to handle complex tables. Suggestion: Make an ini-Option to handle it the old way.

No, sorry, we just can't add a new configuration option for every new feature that could possibly break a plugin.

OK, I understand that.

Other suggestion: fix the TracWysiwygPlugin. This is probably quite easy, as the only change required is to add a space in empty cells. That change would even be backward-compatible with 0.11.

When my workload has sunk to a bearable level, I'll consider that.

Ciao.

[Christian Boos]

Changes documented in 0.12/WikiFormatting@2.