[pmwiki-users] Re: Perfection and Menus (WAS: onover-bundling) . . .

Radu radu at monicsoft.net
Thu Mar 10 14:42:26 CST 2005


At 12:14 PM 3/10/2005, Fred Chittenden wrote:
>IMHO, this is likely to be such a short term problem that it's hardly worth
>dealing with globally for those few Mac Users effected.

Jeez. Try explaining that to THEM :) Ever seen an enraged Mac user storm in 
your office because his or her favorite platform is left out from web 
interface testing?

And let's consider a different reason:

As someone noted already, the GUI is a nice crutch as people learn the 
basic text formatting rules, as well as for quick rendering of snippet-like 
or template-like stuff in the edit area.

However, the wiki is a fast TEXT-BASED editing tool. (By that I don't mean 
to put down app-specific tools like WikiDraw - they're GREAT for their own 
purpose)

In fact was looking into adding keyboard-handling js to the edit textarea 
in order to tie the GUI buttons I use to keyboard shortcuts, and provide 
the option for advanced users to do away with the buttons completely. 
(incidentally, has anyone looked into this already?)

>For those worried about this temporary Mac user bump, there is always the
>option to temporarily set the GUI off, but the norm should be ON.

OK, so since when does anyone of us in the user base establish the norm for 
the others? IMHO, the only one with that power is Pm: the one who made it 
all possible and continues to do so. Power, responsibility... brave man, 
this Pm... :)

I reaffirm my opinion that, though immensely useful as a Cookbook recipe, 
the buttons do not belong in the wiki core.

And I'm puzzled to see some people are so addicted to it that they want to 
make it norm. I'm using a modified version, sometimes different for some 
groups (yea, gotta really look into farming), so I have to override it, and 
after each upgrade to do away with the default one. Not because of its 
size, but I don't like clutter. We get to deal with enough files as it is.

If those reasons aren't enough, consider this:
If people like the guiedit so much, they probably change it to better fit 
their purposes. So either they do what I did and place an alternative in a 
different location, disabling the one from the core, or they have to re-do 
their changes after each upgrade. Or they do a conditional extract of the 
files in the archive to avoid the guiedit script and folder.

No big deal though, and I understand that if many want it, it will continue 
to be there.


Cheers,
Radu
(www.monicsoft.net) 




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