[pmwiki-users] Site group and SideBar

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 10:11:08PM +0100, Hans wrote:
> The question was raised and is still in my mind how a switch to the
> new 'Site' group as default for admin and utility pages will affect
> the use and support for the SideBar. 

It's still in my mind as well.  :-)

> The present default pmwiki skin.tmpl uses
>    <!--wiki:$Group.SideBar Main.SideBar-->
> and supplies a default Main.SideBar with the distribution, for quick
> and easy installation.
> ...
> So I wonder if the following
> 
> <!--wiki:$Group.SideBar $DefaultGroup.SideBar $SiteGroup.SideBar-->
> 
> is not providing a gentler upgrade route, by giving support for
> Main.SideBar, since 'Main' is the default group. 

Probably not.  Since the present default is 'Main.SideBar' and not
'$DefaultGroup.SideBar', we should preserve that specification if
we're really trying to provide an "upgrade route".  This is especially
important for those sites that may be changing $DefaultGroup to be
something other than 'Main'.

In the end what I really want to have in the template is 

   <!--wiki:$Group.SideBar $Site.SideBar-->

so that's what it needs to look like in the template, especially for 
new PmWiki installations.  We may have to do a little behind-the-scenes 
trickery for a while to help existing admins with an upgrade path, but 
I don't want any upgrade path to mislead new installations down the wrong
path to understanding what is going on or what the standard is.

The trickery may even be something like associating some conditional
markup with Site.SideBar that displays Main.SideBar if it exists, and/or
provides the admin with details about what changed, why, and how to
fix it.  Or we may take yet another approach -- but until I 
finish moving things across, I'm not exactly sure what approach 
I'll advocate.

Pm