[Pmwiki-users] Re: Getting rid of the group 'Main'

Christian Ridderström chr
Tue Feb 17 20:12:05 CST 2004


On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 02:55:53AM +0100, Christian Ridderstr?m wrote:
> > I'd like to get rid of all references to the group 'Main' --- guess I use 
> > 'Site' for most purposes that are generic for the site, and 'LyX' for 
> > things specific to what the site is about (i.e. LyX).

Phew... this triggered a long response. I'll answer it in small pieces
instead of a big one, and to confuse the issue, I'll start at the end :-)

> I've never liked the group name "Main" either, but I've never seen
> an alternative that I thought was substantially better.  To me,
> when PmWiki is first installed there needs to be a default group
> (something other than PmWiki/) where pages get installed, and it needs
> to have a fairly generic name.  For a new admin it's a lot nicer to start
> with a few pages in place to point the way to get things started, and it's
> good if new pages that are being created are being created somewhere 
> other than the PmWiki group.

> > And I'm not sure I like that there are so many 'Main'-pages that come with
> > the distribution.
> 
> Well, it's only five.  :-)

I'm aiming for "zero" here, so that I don't feel I have to include 'Main' 
in my list of groups, i.e. see the sidebar here for an illustration:

	http://wiki.lyx.org/pmwiki.php/Site/Site

And yes, this is definitely in the category of ''tweaking'' :-)

The stuff below is partly a repetition in my other mail, but this is the 
relevant topic so...

> Main.HomePage is the starting point.

How about Main.Welcome, PmWiki.Welcome or Playground.Welcome as a starting 
point? (The name 'Welcome' is friendly at least :-)

> Main.WikiSandbox is fairly innocuous, and is referenced several places
> from Main.HomePage and PmWiki.* pages.

An alternative to Main.WikiSandbox is introducing a group 'Playground',
e.g. Playground.WikiSandbox or Playground.Sandbox. People could also be
encourage to create their own sandboxes in this group.

> Something like Main.SearchWiki has to exist *somewhere* for searches to
> be enabled

The name PmWiki.SearchWiki sounds pretty good to me, but maybe there's a 
reason why it shouldn't be in the PmWiki-group. Could you explain why the 
page must exist? (Is it so that the help text will show up?)

> Main.SideBar provides a convenient default place for a sidebar.

Well, I don't think there should be a sidebar by default, and given the 
contents of the sidebar (lots of PmWiki-documentation), I think 
PmWiki.SideBar should work?

> Main.GroupAttributes just provides some first-level password protection
> for the group.

Eh? This is a new page for me.. exactly what kind of protection does this 
get you?

> I know that we need at least a default HomePage, a WikiSandbox, and a 
> SearchWiki page, and that these should *not* go in the PmWiki group.

Hmm... just checking that I'm following you:

You don't want the 'HomePage' in PmWiki because then the admin might start
to create pages in that group => extra cleanup.

But I don't really understand about 'WikiSandbox'... although it doesn't 
feel "tidy" to mess with PmWiki.WikiSandbox.

As for SearchWiki, I don't understand at all why it can't go into PmWiki.

> So, I need a different group in which to put them.  Main is what I
> reluctantly chose, being unable to find anything I liked better.

Main is definitely generic :-)

> "Site" is a reasonable alternative but might be a bit confusing to
> some.

True, and it's also a bit generic. Here's a part of how I've organized 
wiki.lyx.org, maybe that'll give us some ideas:

* LyX -- the main group and starting point. Contains stuff about LyX
* Site -- the group contains site specific information:
	help using the site; settings & doc; global sidebars etc
* PmWiki -- documentation/help about PmWiki
* Playground -- a place to put the the sandboxes in
* SiteTest -- A group with pages used to test functions and extensions. 
	The pages also double as examples of to use the extensions.

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m                           http://www.md.kth.se/~chr





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