[pmwiki-users] Supporting different modes in default pmwiki

Neil Herber nospam at eton.ca
Tue Aug 9 12:47:38 CDT 2005


At 2005-08-09  01:12 PM -0400, Radu is rumored to have said:
>>However, this does highlight a big difference between Word and PmWiki - 
>>Word is crammed full of tools that different people have varying uses 
>>for. PmWiki has very few analogs of tools, other than the edit, history, 
>>etc. buttons. The devilish complexity in PmWiki is buried in the markup, 
>>and the only real "tools" that help with that task are the GUI edit buttons.
>
>I beg to differ. There's a lot of potential complexity in pmwiki if you 
>consider all recipes available, as well as presently unavailable, but 
>potentially useful recipes. I would like to be able to have:
>
>* display view (AFAICT most people agree with this one)

This is one "view" that I think deserves prominence above the others, since 
makes PmWiki a very convenient CMS. I use it as such already, but it 
doesn't bother me (or my audiences apparently) that there are "wiki" 
vestiges visible on the website so all I have done is edit-protect some pages.

It would be nice to have a recipe (it may exist - I haven't looked) that 
tells admins how to create websites for the outside world that are wikis 
for the content managers. It is really just a combination of things like 
switchable skins, user authorizations , and clean URLs. But maybe that's 
what you are calling a view

>* various add-on functions for the author view (calendar, calculator, 
>schedule bar, To-Do list...)
>* blog view
>* an export bar (with saved options for sets of page compilation and 
>typesetting rules) for:
>** plain text
>** HTML
>** PDF
>
>* different edit views and edit addons (section edit by itself won't allow 
>me to move text among sections, so I'll have both section edit -when I get 
>to it or when it becomes available- and page edit)
>* view/toolbars for editing:
>** schedules/To-Do lists
>** tables
>** drawings
>** equations
>** help (would include the EditQuickReference that's currently ignored- at 
>least by the people on my test wiki)

Unless you are talking about multiple floating windows (or OS X widgets), I 
find it hard to imagine how a "view" would incorporate something like a 
calendar. I would want to or expect to go to a calendar page. Perhaps what 
is needed for the unimaginative such as me are a few mocked up pages (done 
in Photoshop if need be) that show me what particular "views" look like and 
cause me to slap my forehead and say "Oh! I can't do without the Zoidberg 
view!"

Note that in the portion of your list above, four of the items (tables, 
drawings, equations, and help) are all "tools" I would expect to encounter 
on the edit page only. Otherwise, what I should see is the *result* of 
using the tool.

>* an admin view (if not several), with specialized bars for easier 
>navigation to admin pages and other nooks where the authors should not 
>poke their noses (including the pages used to maintain/edit the toolbars 
>and views)

I accomplish this by having a single link in my sidebar to my admin group, 
which is read-protected.



>You could agree though, that the few of us who find the idea of views 
>appealing can continue working on it, right? ;)

You make it sound like I might disagree with this statement, which I do 
not. People should never be discouraged from working on (legal) things that 
enthuse them - you never know what kind of benefits might ensue.

I do wonder if some of the enthusiasm and energy would be more helpful to 
the PmWiki cause if it was directed to more mundane things, such as 
cleaning up the current docs. However, that is strictly my view (???!!!) 
and should not be taken as any criticism of existing efforts. In 
particular, the view/mode discussion was migrated to a PmWiki doc page 
faster than any other item I have seen discussed here, and that is great!



Neil

Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/
Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
Tel: (613) 829-4668 





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