[pmwiki-users] Why all this zapping?

kjettil kjettil at wanadoo.fr
Tue May 1 12:53:08 CDT 2007


The two questions on ZAP, Acme and ZAPwiki I asked less than 36 hours 
ago have not been clearly answered, but have resulted in some 50 
elucidating contributions from more than a dozen contributors.

All these contributions lead me to the conclusion that ZAP (or Acme or 
whatever it may be called) is a continual source of great confusion; ZAP 
might be a useful set of tools - sometime in a more distant future when 
basic functionality, stability and security requirements have been met - 
but should certainly not be considered for serious web site development 
now, or in the near future.

As concerns the PmWiki discussion media, we already have two email 
lists, pmwiki-users and pmwiki-devel. They are intended for two 
different sets of discussions/contributions.

I'd propose that, similarly, the Cookbook recipes be organized in two sets:

1 - One set for recipes which have been tested and proved to be stable, 
reliable and secure, and therefore can be recommended for safe use by 
serious web site developers.
2 - One set for recipes under development and testing, and which may be 
released to the first set, when further testing has shown their 
stability, reliability and security. Discussions on this set should take 
place in pmwiki-devel.

This way those who need functionality that is not in the the PmWiki core 
have an open, clear choice and can be aware of the risks involved. I.e 
either safely use proven recipes for their PmWiki production 
installations, or take the risk of having problems by using non-proven 
(be it sometimes more innovative) recipes.

This won't prevent or restrict any bright idea or solution being brought 
forward and tested, but the recipe will be in the development Cookbook 
until it's mature enough for wider release.

With this solution, the PmWiki reputation (as a versatile, stable, 
reliable and secure wiki software) won't be tarnished by the fact that 
people will find that some Cookbook recipe doesn't work as envisaged, 
compromises security or is virtually impossible to bring into a working 
state without a lot of additional coding work.

/kjettil




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