[pmwiki-users] Major revision to ZAP (based on PVT replace)...

[The Editor]

As I'm in the process of doing a fairly major rewrite to how ZAP works
under the hood, and I'm extremely excited by the possibilities
suggested by Hans' new PVTreplace recipe (a Eureka moment), I'm
considering making my current rewrite even more radical...

Proposed Changes:
1) Eliminate the hidedata format and rely on admins to properly hide
data in read protected pages.
2) Eliminate (:zapdata:) and require admins to use fully specified text vars
3) Eliminate the ZAPshortcuts notation (this one is optional...)

The first two at least, are essential to do the kind of drastic, under
the hood changes I'm thinking about right at the moment.

The advantages:
*Could probably cut out as much as 25% of the code
*Would bring ZAP more into line with the standard practices of PmWiki admins.
*ZAP would be more accessible to programmers, less learning curve
*The code (and debugging) would be much simpler.

The disadvantages:
*It would require a few extra key strokes in creating forms snippets
*It would break any existing forms using hide, zapdata.  It's already
going to be broken for conditionals and validation.

Any comments or thoughts on this proposed change?

Cheers,
Dan