SeeSaw Macro

SeeSaw is a MoinMoin macro written by Jim Wight.

Overview

In case that a particular topic is very complex, you might have to provide quite a large amount of information. On the Web, chances are that a user will stop reading any information at all if she gets flooded with too many pieces of information.

A common technique to deal with this problem is to provide only essential information but to allow the user to "show" more information usually represented by a short description.

That's what the MoinMoin macro SeeSaw is designed to do.

Applications

There are three main applications for this purpose:

• (Show (and later may be hide) a string of characters within a particular paragraph.
• Switch between to different version of a paragraph, for example a "UNIX" and a "Windows" version.
• Reveal a (potentially large amount of) text after a click on a kind of short description or header

The first application works "Inline", the other two on a "Section".

These three applications are demonstrated underneath.

Inline Usage

This line contains some »» «« hidden text. Click on the link to show it.

The code:

This line contains some <<SeeSaw(section=foo, inline=" hidden", bg="#FEE1A5")>> text. Click on the link to show it.

Note that "foo" is used as section name. Every seesaw-section must have a name unique on the current page.

Section Usage

Reveal Text

Show Hide the details the details

The code:

<<SeeSaw(section="foo", toshow="<<Show>> the details", tohide="<<Hide>> the details", bg="#FEE1A5", speed="Slow")>>
{{{#!wiki seesaw/foo/foo-bg/hide

.... (stuff to be revealed)
}}}

Note that "foo" is used as section name. Every seesaw-section must have a name unique on the current page.

Reveal Code

Note that for including code, the SeeSaw code must be embraced not by three but by four curlies (={}). Only then APL code, which needs to be embraced by three curlies as well, will get recognized as such properly.

Show Hide the code the code

Prim←{{⍵/⍨2=+⌿0=⍵∘.|⍵}⍳⍵}

The code:

<<SeeSaw(section="foo", toshow="<<Show>> the code", tohide="<<Hide>> the code", bg="#FEE1A5", speed="Slow")>>
{{{{#!wiki seesaw/foo/foo/hide
{{{
Prim←{{⍵/⍨2=+⌿0=⍵∘.|⍵}⍳⍵
}}}
}}}}

Note that "foo" is used as section name. Every seesaw-section must have a name unique on the current page.

Note also that the SeeSaw-section is enclosed not by three but by four curly brackets. Only this way the three curly brackets inside the SeeSaw-section are recognized as APL-code-markup.

Toggle Text

The code:

{{{#!wiki seesaw/example3/show
'''Dyalog Section''' (show <<SeeSaw(section="foo", toshow="APLX", speed="Slow")>> section)

Some details related to Dyalog APL.<<BR>>
This is shown initially. It is hidden and the "APLX" section is displayed when "Show APLX section" is clicked.
}}}
{{{#!wiki  seesaw/foo/hide
'''APLX Section''' (Show <<SeeSaw(section="foo", toshow="Dyalog", speed="Slow")>> section)

Some details related to APLX.<<BR>>
This is hidden initially.
}}}

Note that "foo" is used as section name. Every seesaw-section must have a name unique on the current page.

Warnings

Pictures

Sometimes, so rarely, MoinMoin refuses to deliver all pictures, if there are many of them on a page. Although this sounds unlikely, this effect happens to happen more often in SeeSaw-controlled sections. This is not a mistake of SeeSaw - pressing F5 often fixes the problem, or at least changes the problem: invisible pictures might become visible while visible pictures might become invisible.

So try to avoid putting a section with many pictures into a SeeSaw-controlled section. This is a very rare problem which you might never come across anyway.

Table-of-contents

In version 1.7.1 of MoinMoin (where SeeSaw was made available), a TOC could very well be controlled by SeeSaw. This feature stopped working after upgrading to MoinMoin 1.8.1

Conclusion

To hide complex parts of information is possible in two ways:

• Splitting it into different pages, adding links to sub-pages
• Represent the details by a short description and make it visible by a click on it without the additional drawback of a page reload.

The former technique has it's merits, of course, but it comes with drawbacks as well: If the sub-pieces are relatively small but their total number is high, it might increase the number of pages dramatically. Not helpful at all when searching pages.

In those cases the hide/show technique represented here is certainly an alternative. The "Reveal" method would be appropriate for that.

However, the other methods demonstrated on this page are less usefull, but still...

Only it needs JavaScript: if the user has disabled it, the whole damn mechanism doesn't work.