[pmwiki-users] Edit page extensions

[Jonathan Scott Duff]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 09:33:47AM -0500, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 02:19:29PM +0200, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> > So let's 
> > place everything into an administrative wiki page (say, EditPage), ready 
> > for editing by administrators.
> 
> I've played with this idea off and on over the last several months,
> but haven't been able to convince myself it's the best way to go.
> But I can't say it's a bad way to go either, so here's a look at
> some general issues we'd have to keep in mind or address...
> 
> 1.  Where should EditPage live?  I'm guessing it should live as 
> Main.EditPage, although this could obviously be configurable.

Have you considered having a group that's just for configuration
items?  Call it PmWikiConfig by default.  This would give cookbook
authors a standard place to put config-by-wiki configuration items. 

> 2.  It's pretty clear that by default EditPage would need to be locked
> against all edits except by the administrator.

Indeed.  Same goes for the PmWikiConfig group that I just suggested.

> 3.  What happens if EditPage doesn't exist?  Some admins remove
> (or de-activate) the pages that come distributed with PmWiki,
> so we'd want to handle that situation somewhat gracefully.  (Perhaps
> it just falls out of the "required elements tacked on at the end"
> condition.)

Presumably we can have an array that redundantly specifies the default
text of the EditPage such that when the page isn't there, we use that
text instead.

> 4.  Perhaps it should be called "EditForm" or "EditPageForm"?
> Or, for symmetry with the variables it affects most directly,
> perhaps PageEditForm?

EditPage works for me.  Especially if living in a PmWikiConfig group.

> > Recipes should be able to determine whether an edit element is optional 
> > or required. Optional elements not mentioned on EditPage are left out, 
> > required elements are tacked on at the end. 
> 
> Or, all editing elements provided by recipes could be "required", and 
> an administrator can use DisableMarkup() and/or ConditionalMarkup to 
> selectively disable them.  This way including a recipe would
> automatically cause its feature(s) to be displayed in the edit page
> form, and authors could reposition or disable the features by modifying
> the EditForm.

As long as we don't accidentally make extra work for the recipe writer
to provide optional editing elements.

> > The framework would be good for creating other kinds of pages beyond 
> > those for editing. Applications that I can see are:
> > * In general, pages that are built from a wiki page.
> 
> If this is the case, we probably ought to develop and standardize a
> markup for all forms and avoid specialized edit-page markups, similar
> to WikiForms or the FormGuideSystem.

I agree.

-Scott
-- 
Jonathan Scott Duff
duff at pobox.com