[pmwiki-users] Workflow?

Henrik Bechmann henrik at bechmannsoftware.com
Mon Nov 28 12:12:10 CST 2005


Patrick,

Re:

The difficulty is knowing when to create the pending copies, and
>getting the different actions (?action=source, ?action=diff, ?action=attr,
>?action=search) to know when to use the pending copy versus the released copy.

I would say

when to create the pending copies would be when saved as a pending copy (by radio button)

source can apply to the published version only

diff applies to each of the published and draft versions independently. When they get merged, you can toss the diff's of the draft, and have the published version generate the diff of having the draft added.

attr applies to the published version and is inherited by the draft version.

search applies to the published version only.

FWIW.

- Henrik

Henrik Bechmann
www.osscommons.ca
www.bechmannsoftware.com
Webmaster, www.dufferinpark.ca



Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

>On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 12:21:22AM -0500, Henrik Bechmann wrote:
>  
>
>>   I think the simplext would be if everyone would see the released version,
>>   and authors would have to go to the edit page to see the pending version
>>   in the preview portion of the form. 
>>    
>>
>
>My comment that authors could get confused by hitting edit on the
>released version and then see a somewhat different pending version
>still applies.  
>
>Here's a couple of scenarios that concern me:
>
>1. Both Alice and Bob are authors.  Alice makes some substantial edits 
>   to a page but doesn't release them (i.e., we have a released version 
>   and a pending version).  Bob then comes to the web site, and notices
>   a small typographical error in the released version.  He presses "edit"
>   (getting the pending version with Alice's changes), fixes the typo,
>   and releases the updated page, but never noticed Alice's edits.
>   Both Bob and Alice are then surprised when Alice's draft edits have
>   suddenly become released edits.
>
>2. Both Alice and Bob are authors.  Alice makes some substantial edits
>   to the entire page, so that it looks almost nothing like the original,
>   but doesn't release them.  Bob comes to the same page and decides to
>   update it, but when he presses "edit" he gets something that looks
>   nothing like what he was trying to edit.  As a result he's confused
>   and convinced that there must be something wrong with the system because
>   he keeps getting a version of the page other than the one he's
>   able to see on the web site.
>   
>  
>
>>>One option is to configure the system so that edits always take
>>>place on "-Draft" versions of pages, and then provide an easy way
>>>to replace the released version with the -Draft text.
>>>      
>>>
>>But many people may not want this, so making it an option (off by default)
>>would certainly suffice. 
>>    
>>
>
>Oh, for any of these scenarios I'm definitely talking about something
>that is optional and off by default.  I like PmWiki's current edit
>semantics just fine.
>
>  
>
>>>Another option is to create a special "released.d/" directory for
>>>released versions of the pages, while edits always take place on
>>>the pages in the "wiki.d/" directory.
>>>      
>>>
>>I don't know that a full blown versioning system is necessary. You might
>>consider a 'pending' subdirectory for in-process pages, if that makes it
>>easier. 
>>    
>>
>
>Oh, I wasn't going to a full-blown versioning system, but we do have
>to have some way of distinguishing releases versus drafts (pending).
>I was thinking of "wiki.d/" above as being the pending subdirectory
>(i.e., it's the one containing the latest edits) while "released.d/"
>contains the pages that have actually been released.
>
>But ultimately we have to have somewhere to mark the differences.
>I'm guessing we can do this in the page files themselves, in the
>the page names ("-Draft"), or by holding the released versus pending
>pages in separate subdirectories.
>
>  
>
>>   The suffix approach may cause problems with searches etc. 
>>    
>>
>
>We have trouble even with the non-suffix approaches.  When doing
>a search, PmWiki searches the most recent version of the markup
>text -- we'd have to build in something special to get it to 
>search only the released version of the text.  Or we have to keep
>around two copies of the text, and either the edit modules or
>the search modules (or both) have to be aware of the two versions.
>
>This is why doing it by name "-Draft" might be nice -- the name 
>makes it clear to an author that they're working on a draft 
>(pending) version, and there's little confusion about who sees
>what.  It's easy to exclude page names ending in "-Draft" from
>searches:
>
>    $SearchPatterns['default'][] = '!-Draft$!';
>
>All that would need to be done to make this work is to have
>"?action=edit" be smart enough to read from a "-Draft" version of
>a page if available, to have "Save" always mean "Save as draft",
>and add a "release" option that saves the contents to the original
>location instead of the draft (and eliminates the "-Draft") page.
>
>This also makes it easy to see which pages have outstanding
>drafts (have a "list=draft" option to pagelist, or use "list=all"), 
>and it separates draft edit histories from page edit histories.
>
>  
>
>>   ... all I'm suggesting is
>>   that once you throw a switch, then all edit operations take place on a
>>   single copy (say in a pending dir) until the pending copy over-writes the
>>   previous version, and is then deleted. Of course the person making the
>>   edit would have the option of releasing the edit immediately (ie. not
>>   making a pending copy).
>>    
>>
>
>The difficulty is knowing when to create the pending copies, and
>getting the different actions (?action=source, ?action=diff, ?action=attr,
>?action=search) to know when to use the pending copy versus the released copy.
>
>  
>
>>   I would say if there is a simple way for you to do this (not time
>>   consuming, perhaps even a recipe to try it out) then that would probably
>>   be the right way.
>>    
>>
>
>If there was a simple and obvious way to do it, I probably would've
>done it by now.  So it's not exactly a trivial fix, although the
>discussion above has helped me to clarify the issues in my head.  :-)
>
>  
>
>>   Does this help?
>>    
>>
>
>Yes, it helps a bunch.
>
>  
>




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