SeeSaw Macro

Contents

  1. SeeSaw Macro
    1. Overview
    2. Applications
      1. Inline Usage
      2. Section Usage
        1. Reveal Text
        2. Reveal Code
        3. Toggle Text
    3. Warnings
      1. Pictures
      2. Table-of-contents
    4. Conclusion

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:

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

These three applications are demonstrated underneath.

Inline Usage

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

Section Usage

Reveal Text

Show the details

This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in. This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in. This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in. This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in.

This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in. This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in. This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in. This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in. This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in. This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in. This paragraph might contain a large amount of details only geeks might be interested in.

  • Might contain all sorts of elements
  • Including lists

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 the code 

Prim←{{⍵/⍨2=+⌿0=⍵∘.|⍵}⍳⍵}

Toggle Text

Dyalog Section (show APLX section)

Some details related to Dyalog APL.
This is shown initially. It is hidden and the "APLX" section is displayed when "Show APLX section" is clicked.

APLX Section (Show Dyalog section)

Some details related to APLX.
This is hidden initially.

Warnings

Pictures

Sometimes, so rarely, MoinMoin refuses to deliver all pictures, if there are many of them on a page. Although this sound unlikely, this effect happens to happen more often in a 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:

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.