[pmwiki-users] [PATCH] create links to individual changes on history page

[Pico]

Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 02:16:38PM -0400, Scott Connard wrote:
>>> Thinking a bit larger for a second, I've been working on improving
>>> date/time handling throughout PmWiki, primarily to be able to also
>>> address the issue of viewing a page as of some point in its history.
>>> Thus one would be able to say something like
>>> ..../Main/HomePage?when=2006-01-01 to see the version of
>>> Main.HomePage that existed as of January 1, 2006.
>> This is going to lead to major complications as you'll need to  
>> acquire includes and uploads as of that date too...local  
>> configuration issues might also be an issue....  As one who works in  
>> the Configuration Management field, you will never be able to  
>> completely display a page as it was on a certain date.  
> 
> Excellent points.  The ?when= feature is highly requested, though, see
> http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PITS/00220 .  There are a number of people
> who would probably want the "view as of date" feature even if it's
> not perfectly correct -- who are primarily interested in seeing the
> content of a page even if it's not exactly what appeared on that
> particular date.
> 
>> By pretending  
>> to do so, you will only invite trouble as more people find more and  
>> more things that you need to deal with trying to match the look at a  
>> certain date (skin changes, pmwiki core changes, etc, etc.).  What if  
>> older diffs have been eliminated from some of the files.
> 
> We can always disable (:include:), (:pagelist:), Attach:, etc., for
> the ?when= option.  (If the diff history doesn't go back that far in
> time, we simply return a message indicating that's the case.)
> 
> And we can put enough caveats and warnings in place that indicate 
> that what the viewer is seeing is PmWiki's "best guess" at the
> version of the page without guaranteeing its fidelity.
> 

I've been thinking about this in the context of all the recent 
discussions about improving ways to set and extract variables, including 
  {$?var} query strings.

I agree that, for most purposes, it will be a fine to provide a view as 
of date that is not perfect and that identifies the potential gaps.

But the ability to provide a "more perfect" view may be a great plus in 
certain applications that may warrant a separate recipe.

For that to happen, however, it seems to me that it would be important 
to keep this in mind when coding these new variables and, specifically, 
to consider whether hooks can be inserted in approriate places that 
would make it easier for a versioning recipe to be implemented.

FWIW, in my view a separate versioning recipe to display past page 
content might be able to expect some additional assistance in the form 
of restore points that could be triggered by actions, e.g., print in 
settings where versioning is used in place of a hard copy).

Pico


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