[pmwiki-users] Some feedback/remarks/comments about pmwiki ...

[WvL]

FEEDBACK:
  Hi pm & all,
  fist of all, and this is the most important,
  for me pmwiki is a superior, great and valuable tool
  - thank you, pm, for your superior work/efforts (... and to all contributors) !!!

  What i like:
  - i like that it's free/gpl'ed !
  - i like the openness (code, data, features) !
    (though i wondered, why the datafiles are not XML-based)
  - i like that it's "simple", i.e. overviewable, compact, no separate SQL Database
  - i like the clear and compact coding style !
  - i like the immediate support efforts (pm mailing list) of the developer(s) !!!
  - i like that there is a real living community!

  What - in my concerns - could be improved:
  - There is NO Group nesting,
    at least i practically would need a nesting-depth of additionally 3 Subgroups
    (imagine your filesystem on your pc would be restricted to creating just root-level directories
     this would lead to limit the REAL structure of your contents
     and to a error-prone handling of your "flattened" datafiles ...)

  - Missing information-separation between the different audiences, i.e.
    (readers; writers/authors; administrators; developers/contributors
     - novice/beginners; advanced; at expert level)

  - Depending on this, each newcomer has the same concerns
    - Where do i find the needed information?
       (there are too much info-sources ...
        Documentation index, Cookbook/Recipes (with mostly several alternatives there),
        FAQ, Questions, mailing list, mailing list archives ...)
    - This leads to unnessesary, avoidable traffic on the pm-mailing-list !!
    - What and how much should i read on each level (maybe a missing filtering-feature? ) ??

  - i miss a "How-to-contribute-list/TO-DO-list",
    i.e. how can someone support the project depending from the abilities of each willing contributor?
    i.e. what tasks would need to be done next?

At last, some various, more PRACTICAL CONCERNS:
- Internationalisation (i restrict here to german):
  How to synchronize between the standard (english) Documentation
  and the german docu. ?
  If changes are made to the standard, how to "trigger" the need for a change to the german docu.
  so that in turn it is always 'up-to-date' ?

- Effect of: Disabling/recommenting $EnableUpload = 1;
  This "disables" not only the ability to uploading in general,
  but "disables" rendering of all so far uploaded images
  (showing the textual markup-code instead)
  - is it the desired semantics of this directive?


I managed to establish a first installation so far.
My next concerns/topics were
- HOWTO: extend each page with a Wikipedia-like "discussion"-/feature/tab/page  (i use the monobook-skin)?

- HOWTO: handy organize/access Photo-Album(-Upload)s?
  intended structure, e.g.: <user>.Photos.<year>.<albumname, e.g.="Halloween">/DSC_xxxx.JPG
  with multiple-selection upload-feature
  (well, i see there are cookbook-recipes, but which should i take/extend?
   Simply: what's recommended?)

- HOWTO: easily convert HTML-content from an existing site into pm-markuped content?
  (it's a non-profit project, 150 HTML-pages, 700 images + 700 thumbs(or cache-creating))

- HOWTO: exploit the knowledge, that's included in the pm-mailing-list archives?
  (well, i could write a script, that compiles each archive contents
   into a better readable "treelike"-style ... or even into pmwiki-datafile-pages ...)

Sorry for this lengthy post!
With best regards,
Wolfgang/WvL