[Pmwiki-users] Additional page history feature

[Steven Leite]

> On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> > I've just added a small feature to the page revisions (page history)
> > code in the beta version; at the top of the page history is a link
> > that says "Display as markup" which redisplays the page history
> > differences as the source markup changes instead of the rendered text.

> And /Christian replied:
> I just had a thought... maybe it'd be an idea to display the two 
> versions that are being compared next to each, as in tkdiff for instance 
> (see the attached snapshot).

I like to look at how other Wiki's do these things, and then do what works instead of re-inventing the wheel.  I really really like the way Use-Mod has handled this.  It works well, it's simple, and I'd say approaching elegant!  I can't be bothered to attach screen shots, so what I'll do instead is direct you to a few links, or better yet, try some random links on the page for yourself (Just click Recent changes, then Randomly pick a page, then scroll to the bottom and click View other revisions.  From there, just play around with the compare feature to see how it works.  I think it's perfect.  It's simple, but very effective!

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?action=browse&diff=1&id=GermanTranslation&diffrevision=35&revision=27

Click link below to see how a whole bunch of revisions look like (comparing two different revisions, number 35 and 27.

Then click on this one to see how the list of revisions is presented in such a way that is simple for the user to understand.

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?action=history&id=GermanTranslation 

(note that even if you click View other revisions to see what revisions there were, you are still presented (automatically) the revisions between the current and the previous whether you ask for them or not.  I think it's great!  Uusually people are only interested in seeing what has changed since the last revision, so why make them do an extra click?

I also really like how it lists the Author of the last document.  I noticed PmWiki doesn't have anything like that which is .. well, disappointing, but no big deal I guess.  But it's nice to see WHO is doing the edits sometimes instead of just an IP address.  I think it would be simple to implement an Author field in the EDIT form (not that it will be recorded anywhere else but the RecentChanges document, but still, it would be nice).

Note:  Many of you probably have experience with use-mod, and many of you probably gave up on it because of it's extremely slow updates (took almost two years waiting for the last and final release!).  However, this last release is quite good, lots of the features have been ironed out.  It's worth some in depth looks so that we can make continued improvements to PmWiki.  It's too bad there won't be any more releases of Use-Mod wiki. :)

Steven Leite

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