[Pmwiki-users] Migration plans (was: v2 advanced tables direction)

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 10:13:49AM +0200, chr at home.se wrote:
> 
> To be honest, I've hardly looked at v2 versus v1. Is there somewhere a
> list comparing the functionality of the two versions? Ideally, the list
> should also indicate the status/stability of the functionality. At least
> for me it's becoming interesting to look at such a list.

I don't know if there's a list that compares functionality -- I should
put one together.  The biggest improvements:
1.  Much cleaner markup, especially links to other pages
2.  Simultaneous edits
3.  Easier to implement customized markup
4.  Some features (listings of pages, automatic searches) are built-in
5.  Block WikiStyles
6.  Modular page storage routines (you can provide an alternate backend)
7.  Correctly generates <p> tags
8.  Available via anonymous CVS

> * For my wiki.lyx.org, someone is bound to ask me *why* the syntax has
>   been changed... some ready made motivations would be nice :-)

Basically there was too much confusion between the various forms of
[[...]] and {{...}} links, not to mention that explaining that
a link to "Page" had to be written [[{{Page}} some link text]] was
definitely a burden.  Also the old markup didn't have any good guidelines
about things like [[searchresults]], [[$Title]], [[$Edit text]], etc--
the special cases were just too confusing.

The new link syntax is much simpler -- always use [[...]] for a link, and
everything in [[...]] is a link of some sort.  Directives are always 
[:something:], variable substitutions are {$Name}.  

> Apprehensions and worries:
> * For my work wiki, I'm primarily worried that it'll stop working or that
>   I might loose information. 

Well, one of the upgrade paths allows you to prototype and test v2.0 on 
your existing wiki content pages without having to disturb the existing
wiki or risk the pages.  Thus you can find out what does and doesn't 
work before committing to an upgrade.

> ** The lack of being able to use Emacs/pmwiki-mode is a showstopper here
>    for efficiency reasons.

I'm afraid that one is in your court, as I don't use Emacs :-) .  However, 
the interface is almost entirely the same between v1.0 and v2.0, so you
should be able to do basic editing (without simultaneous edit 
detection/handling) pretty much the same as before.  In order for the 
editor to participate in simultaneous edit handling, it needs to be able
to pass back the timestamp given in the page when ?action=edit was
requested, and to see if the post was successful.  (Or, if you trust 
your clock to match the server's clock closely enough, 
Emacs/pmwiki-mode could just use the time when the page was retrieved.)

> * For wiki.lyx.org, I'm worried about having to manually check a rather
>   large number of pages manually, to see that they are still correct.

I'm hoping that people will submit items that the automatic 1.0->2.0
converter doesn't catch, so that we can get things converted quickly.
For the converter, I'm even supporting markup conversions for things
that were in 1.0 cookbook recipes if people will let me know what needs
to be included (or will send me patch files for the conversion script).

Pm