[pmwiki-users] Why all this zapping?

[The Editor]

On 4/30/07, kjettil <kjettil at wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> On http://www.fast.st/zapbeta/index.php?n=Support-Engine/HomePage one
> can read that a "ZAPWIKI" is "coming soon"! The site tells that
> "ZAPWIKI" is "/not designed to be a replacement for PmWiki/". Is it to
> become a "lean competitor" to PmWiki, or what is the purpose of this new
> wiki software?

ZAPwiki is something I'm developing as kind of an experiment to see if
a wiki couldn't be made a lot simpler. I have a few radical ideas and
want to try it out as "proof of concept". I do not envision it
becoming a serious competitor to PmWiki which is certainly more
robust, secure, and flexible.  However, ZAPwiki will have some nice
advantages (mostly simplicity and ease of use for non programmers),
and may be preferable in certain situations.

However, as I've mentioned before, questions about it should be
directed to me personally as I don't think it's appropriate to do
anything that promotes it on this list at least. I'll respond to
questions, but would prefer them submitted via comments on the spec
pages for ZAPwiki or personal emails to me.

> In the Cookbook, you find that  "ZAP" is now called "Acme", for some
> reason (see above?). There are still some "pure ZAP" pages, such as ZAP
> Business Directory (which btw doesn't at all fits the Cookbook
> structure).  Will "Acme" develop independently of "ZAP", or will it be
> the "PmWiki version" of "ZAP" in "ZAPWIKI"?

ZAP Business Directory was put up by another person, and probably is
out of date.

For information about why I switched the name to Acme, see
http://www.fast.st/zapbeta/index.php?n=Main/Coyote. There is also some
helpful information at the bottom of the Acme recipe page.

I will continue to support ZAP as an Acme's form processing script for
PmWiki as long as it serves a niche in the community here. I'm
wrapping up development of it however, and hope to have it become a
more "permanent" script as soon as PmWiki comes out of beta, or
shortly thereafter.

> The above situation is confusing (as is e.g the Hg vs Cluster case).

Both are very similar but somewhat different approaches.  See the
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/HierarchicalGroups page for a
comparison.

> PmWiki is a powerful and stable web site engine, with a huge set of
> useful extensions. It's a pity if confusion would be created about its
> future.

Theres no confusion in anyone's mind that I know of regarding the
future of PmWiki. I still think it's the best web management system
out there. While ZAPwiki will have some advantages--even that will be
good for PmWiki as it may stimulate even further development within
the community.


On 4/30/07, Kathryn Andersen <kat_lists at katspace.homelinux.org> wrote:
> My understanding is that Dan renamed ZAP to Acme simply because he
> wanted to appear first in all the lists in the Cookbook, rather than
> letting ZAP stand on its own merits.  You are not the first person to
> point out that this is confusing, and you probably won't be the last,
> because Dan is not listening to the suggestions to revert the name back
> to ZAP.

Actually Kathryn, that is not completely fair.  : ).  First, there
were several reasons--the biggest is suggested in the link I mentioned
above at zapsite.  Second, I have actually had as much or more
positive feedback on the name change than negative, with several
encouraging me NOT to change it back. Actually my associate is
encouraging me to rename Hg to AcmeHg and MarkupExpressionsExtensions
to AcmeExtensions, etc., and I must admit I find the idea kind of
unifying.  : )

> As for Hg versus Cluster, I know I am partly to blame for this, for
> having created Cluster in the first place.  However, I vaguely recall
> that Dan recently said he wasn't interested in mainting Hg any more.  Is
> this correct?  If so, maybe we could clean up the confusion by factoring
> out the differences between Hg and Cluster so that they aren't so
> similar any more.

Well, my associate has taken over maintenance of Hg, as noted on the
page.  And as it's only had one bug fix in recent memory (that others
discovered, solved, and fixed) it's not a lot of work anyway.

Also, Hg and Cluster have both grown in somewhat different directions
since their initial releases, and it would now be to disruptive to try
and merge them.  They both deal with breadcrumbs, group titles, etc
very differently and Hg has features like virtual wikis, link
prefixing, and natural cleanurls I would not want to drop, nor you to
add.

Cheers,
Dan