[pmwiki-users] Lateral thought from a newbie

[Marc Cooper]

Joachim Durchholz said...
> Marc Cooper schrieb:
> > Basically, you can use PmWiki as a template engine for the process. For 
> > example, to include an invoice on a page: (:invoice:). All invoices for 
> > a customer, (:pagelist etc :). Put the shipping value on PmWiki form: 
> > {$total_shipping}.
> 
> Ah, right. I take my words back and say:
> If I were to write an ecommerce framework, I'd seriously consider using 
> PmWiki for templating. Also for collaboration on things like article 
> descriptions, shop news, sidebars, terms-of-service documents, etc.

Yes.
 
> However, I still maintain that PmWiki gives you no support for all the 
> things that have to do with legal rules or figures&numbers. You'd still 
> have to write your own shopping cart, tax&shipping calculations, 
> invoices, ToS display, payment checking.

Also yes :-) I just happen to have most of these swirling about in my 
box of odds and ends - from having to "tweak" other such packages.

> > So, you often spend a lot of time hacking existing code to do what
> > you need with the disadvantage that you move away from the core
> > product; thus making updates/upgrades time consuming and messy, and
> > add-ons might simply no longer work for you. You also have to spend a
> > lot of time learning how someone else's code works.
> 
> That's very true. I have dabbled with osCommerce, and 90% of the add-ons 
> that you install require patching existing code. I'd be very surprised 
> if it were even remotely possible to upgrade the base engine without 
> reinstalling all the patches, and I don't expect the patches to 
> mindlessly apply after such an upgrade. (osCommerce has other design 
> flaws. I'm somewhat surprised that it's considered one of the better 
> solutions...)

I agree. I recently has a fling with VirtueMart in Joomla and by the 
time you add in Joomla's equivalent of "clean urls", linking customers 
to a forums as users, and so on, you need a wiki to remind yourself of 
all the interactions and how you frigged things, so that you can do it 
all again at the next update. And that's before you start to hack the 
code to do the things you want it to do.

It works great, though... but I hope I never have to touch it again ;-o

Of course, a package is a generic solution, so the comparison with a 
bespoke PmWiki solution is not strictly fair.

> Well, PmWiki could still be of use to an aspiring ecommerce framework 
> programmer. Sure, it would be helpful as a templating and collaboration 
> engine, but that's the less important contribution. A more important 
> contribution would be certain aspects of PmWiki's programming style, 
> such as its generally table-driven nature, and that the tables tend to 
> contain functions and/or template strings. (Actually that's a set of 
> very interesting techniques for any PHP programming that needs 
> pluggability.)

Exactly. That's what I'm finding - and I have much yet to find, I'm 
sure. The way Patrick has put pmwiki together lends itself to the 
management of a simple process, like making a purchase and its 
associated customer care tasks. In a typical PHP package, you tend to 
end up with the horrible spaghetti of PHP and HTML. Even VirtueMart, 
which has made some attempts at form templating, is not for the feint 
hearted. With PmWiki, I'm finding that I have to do surprisingly little 
legwork to get results, and the maintenance is simple, because 
everything is discrete and easy to find, because it's where you expect 
to find it.

-- 
Best,
Marc