[pmwiki-users] Conceptual challenges from ZAPwiki...

[J. Meijer]

Congratulations Dan, your my hero here. You made a great, no exceptional, contribution. 

You're probably thinking of getting out of this community, feeling molested right? Imagine, a member you held in esteem (he even played a role in you coming to pmwiki), kicks you in the balls. And then the list-owner goes in for the kill. Must get a little chilly to say the least. 

I know your presence on this list may seem clumsy or overdone to some, with high exposure levels, but you're keen, helpful and original. Sure, you made some stupid remarks, even offended Pm, but your main line typically is to get things back on track. 

Replying must have gotten boring lately. Other members don't even seem to look at what you or your wiki are, they just look at what it is *not*. Wow, how do you reply to that?! 

So it's American football. It's all in the game, it's only for men and face it, you're not. Your call for respect is totally brutally brought to the ground. 

My 2 cents are that you succeeded in getting abused by the 2 most eloquent members on this list. Have no doubt, I blame them for it. They are elder and have other options at their disposal. They were minimally creative. 

The other members replying to this thread just want all this to end. But they end up blaming you for this thread going astray, really putting the insult ("Get Out") to injury. 

All in all people should have responded more calmly or not have replied at all. Why the hurry? This was to be your day of glory. 

Now mind you, this is all your own doing if you come into the kitchen and just expect the chefs to work with you. Hey, you probably can't even properly cook an egg. 

But you know, the chefs don't (want to) own the restaurant. They abuse, but they apologize. They aren't as tough as their pans. Accept the deal that lets you concentrate on your strengths and they on theirs. 

Or maybe get out and invite Pm to take part on the mailing list. That would leave the community intact. 

It seems our messages crossed. I just saw your message. Read on below for a little in more "in-depth discussion". 

/jm







ps I enjoyed reading about the wiki-clock. I wish it had more controls and some internationalization because the time confused me :) The idea is great, the implementation is a joke :) 
For the sake of internationalization could we instead of some specific time-format move to some measure of earth's rotational position? Relative to the sun? Or even the universe, which means seasons become more visible in the hours daylight hits us. 
When the earth moves around the sun, does this add or subtract a day from the year, just as Jules Vernes traveller around the world found he had won another 'day'? And if we base the day on the earth's rotation relative to the universe, will our day then shorten or lengthen? 
Summarizing, the wiki-clock provoked not-so-bad ideas, ideas I didn't have before.  It educates about time, the solar system and rotational position and how intricate relative movements are underly in our measurements of time. 
Catalysts may be useless to some, but they allow substances to be converted under low-energy conditions, effectively enabling progress. The mind has its own. 


Wikis are just like programming languages. They come in flavors and almost any language can theoretically do anything you want, but the point is how they get you there. Some just make you sick. 

Dan basically aims for a wiki that's visual. That means it shows you the data (or even the code) it's configured with. So if you don't like or trust it, you can see it and change it, right there and then. I attended that same class. I don't want the system to be code, I want it to be data. Wikis (and pmwiki) represent a great platform for this. 

PmWiki is moving in that visual direction. But it is written with an emphasis on the site admin and things are typically configured from config.php. But all that that means is that there is a well-defined interface to get things done. It is the foundation needed to which the future visual interfaces (of which only a few now exist) can write to. 

Dan needs more visuality now, because it fits him as a user. It is also an area where more expertise must stil be developed, it is an unexplored space which must still be chartered. Pioneering is needed and many design revisions will take place before setling. This is where PmWiki will always spawn forks: Pm controls the code but pioneers need to break away and experiment, for example with hierarchies. 


In analogy with languages, Dan probably wants all his wiki elements to explicitly be "first-order", just as they are in more modern generalized languages. Now this is not something typical users can easily put in words. They just become good in workarounds and call that programming. It used to brings in their pay-checks, but clients basically got ripped off by getting highly programmer dependent systems. 

In my own words such systems integrate a higher level of incompetence. Yet the programmer seems like a really heroic guy integrating incompetence - and in a way he truely is. 

Now there are members on this list with a very thorough background in programming (e.g. Patrick) and they know exactly what I mean. They will surely attest that Dan is (at least academically) on the right track, despite his otherwise lacking programming abilities. They will also assert that minimal viable such systems do *not* require more infrastructure. 

In other words, all that Dan has said in other words. Kudo's to Dan. 



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