[pmwiki-users] New WikiGroups on pmwiki.org [Was: Volunteering for a PITS issue]

Petko Yotov 5ko at 5ko.fr
Sat Oct 13 09:09:46 CDT 2012


Simon writes:
> I have to speak in strong support of a separate group for skins
> I think that the community is asking for this, and more, is volunteering to  
> make it happen. 

I have asked the community for the "reasons" why should a category of  
recipes (Skins, and not Administration or Uploads for example) be moved to  
its own group. I wanted to know what problems we currently have that require  
a separate group. And I also asked how should we deal with this group and  
with the Cookbook group translated in other languages.

For the moment, the only real inconvenience we can agree upon is that from  
the names of some pages (eg. Flickr, PhotoGallery or Choice) it is not  
immediately clear that the page is about a skin.

This is a problem with readability.

I am willing to find a way to fix this inconvenience, but we actually found  
more than one way to do it and we should select the better one.

There is also something that should be clear - the Cookbook contains many  
things: modules, simple recipes, skins, even some core documentation. I have  
the feeling that for some people the cookbook should only contain "modules",  
additional programs that are downloaded and installed. For these people  
there are only modules and skins, nothing else, and they see that other  
pieces of software only have those. Our cookbook is more than just for  
modules, and the skins are one category among other recipes/modules.

Peter explained it better than me.

If we create a new Skins group, it should be considered part of the  
Cookbook.

> Having skins in a separate group would have several benefits
> * it clearly identifies skins (look and feel) as separate from add ons  
> (functional extensions), thus emphasising to PmWiki potential users this  
> benefit

We might agree that a number of skin recipes offer far more than look and  
feel, with SiteHeader, SiteFooter, RightBar, skin themes etc. We also have a  
number of look and feel recipes that are not skins, and a number of recipes  
that concern or manage skins, but are not skins. There is not a clear line  
what should be in this new Skins group, and why some recipes shouldn't.

> * it obviates the need to categorising, or naming conventions for skins

Categories: there isn't a problem or a difficulty to add categories to the  
recipes - and if one isn't added, just tell me and I'll add it.

The benefit of having categories rather than WikiGroups is that a recipe can  
be in many categories but in a single group. Moving all skin-related recipes  
to a new group will not obviate the need to categorising, for example the  
blog- or gallery- oriented skins in these categories.

Naming conventions: using a page name "Skins.Name" is a naming convention,  
but instead of a suffix you ask for a prefix. Currently there are no naming  
conventions, most of the skins end in *Skin.

To improve the readability, an alternative to a new group could be to just  
rename the other skins to have a suffix. This will be easier and as  
effective.

> * the cookbook group is big enough without skins

It is also even bigger without the RSS recipes -- should we move them to a  
new group?

I feel that most visitors either search, or browse the Cookbook categories  
to find what they need or might use. Nobody reads all Cookbook pages one  
after another.

> Even if there is a bit of manual work to fix links, etc, I'm happy enough to  
> contribute.

It is not only a bit, it is also about clarity (no clear line what should be  
there), maintenance (new upload directories) and future (other languages).

I am not strongly opposed to a new Skins group (we have more than 90 skins)  
but I am still unsure it would be better than, for example, have a *Skin  
suffix, in order to fix the perceived readability inconvenience.

Petko




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