[pmwiki-users] on over-bundling

[Radu]

At 10:31 PM 3/8/2005, Jonathan Scott Duff wrote:
>People prototype
>features in the cookbook and then when enough "clamoring" happens, Pm
>adds features to pmwiki.

That's it. It's a path for wiki growth. And that reminds me that there can 
be recipes for 'thinning' as well as 'fattening' the distribution. Would it 
be OK to add to the Innitial tasks

"It may be a good idea to go through the distribution files and read the 
documentation at the top of each script. Then after you get comfortable 
with what each of them do, you may want to remove/modify things you don't 
expect to use (like some of the markup in stdmarkup.php or buttons from 
guiedit.php)."

>You know, there's nothing stopping you from building your
>own pmwiki-as-blog or pmwiki-as-cms distributions.  I'm sure if you
>did it, Pm would make a special place for them on pmwiki.org.

So that's an OK then? :)

>Sure.  You can use the category feature to bundle related PITS
>entries.  Also, once everything is categorized, an "issue map" could
>be made relatively easily (showing interdependencies among other
>things).

>  In fact, one of the
>interfaces to the cookbook could be just a series of links to lists of
>modules that belong in a specific category (like search.cpan.org but
>without the temple priests to do the categorization for us).

Good idea. Will try. See, I could not attempt to do something like this 
before asking people with more experience. So I asked before. Sorry if my 
questions sound rethoric or anything...

> > That would allow the pmwiki core to do the core wiki things (provide
> > infrastructure for various features, but not the feature details), and
> > let recipes fill the gap to fully-integrated solution for each
> > use-niche (which people could collaborate on maintaining at the end of
> > each use-niche trail)
>
>Er, isn't this what happens now?  You're just talking about making it
>more visible or more formal it seems.

Not *shiver* formal. Visible, maybe. I was just wondering if other people 
would find more organization beneficial, or if the local culture prefers a 
more artistic discovery method (maybe in order to promote alternative 
solutions to similar problems).

>PHP comes with batteries, tools, parts, pieces, instructions, stuff
>you'll never need, etc. included and that's just a tad overboard (can
>you say "understatement"? ;-)

Actually php has many distributions. There's at least the core install plus 
the archive containing the libraries. But that's a programming tool. A 
factory. It needs breadth. I see a wiki as more of a specialized 
communication tool. You know, the right tool for the right job'n all... A 
swiss army knife. And I'd like to be able to pull out a knife or a spoon at 
any given time.

Again, I'm not at all saying pmwiki is bulky. I'm just hoping it doesn't 
become so by integrating too much. I guess Pm won't let it anyway :)


Cheers,
Radu
(www.monicsoft.net)