[pmwiki-users] Re: Re: Supporting different modes in default pmwiki

chr at home.se chr at home.se
Sun Aug 7 12:17:23 CDT 2005


On Sun, 7 Aug 2005, Hans wrote:

> Before creating special 'modes' for user interfaces according to the
> 'audience' let me try to point out what is already possible.

Please do :-)  To be honest, I expect that very minor modifications of
pmwiki would be needed. Mainly support for remembering the preferred mode
of a user. Something else that's important, but doesn't really require
change, is that come up with standard mechanism for modes -- just to make
it easier for skins to be "compatible". Switching modes might just be the
same as switching a skin, or the skin might consist of several sub-skins.

> We got an (:if auth .... :) conditional markup for wiki pages. This can
> be used to show or hide certain actions in the skin. If the skin uses
> separate wiki pages to configure the actions (action lists) then that is
> very easily done. For skins which have the action lists inside the
> template it is a little more tricky, but still possible. For instance by
> using <!--markup:.............--> to include wiki markup in the skin
> template.
>
> It is up to the admin to determine what action links are being
> displayed, and for what 'audience'.

Oh, I agree. But I'd probably say that it's up to the admin to select 
skin(s) and customize them if so desired. But back to (:if auth ..:)
I don't think it'll work since it requires the user to enter a password?
Or rather, it checks if the user is allowed access... what I'm thinking of 
is actually orthogonal to this. Even someone who normally administers the 
wiki should be able to use them in reading mode if he feels like it, while 
still accessing pages that are password protected.

So something like (:if mode author:) would be needed rather than 'auth'.

As for modes, I'm wondering if maybe the names are slightly wrong since we
still (in general) wish to encourage readers to contribute if they would
like. Going back to the idea that in the reader mode the EDIT link is big
and alluring, while in the author mode you have many (smaller) edit links,
maybe the modes could be thought to correspond to "standard", "advanced"
and "administrator" instead.

> We can also show a different skin using markup.
> The following adds a (:skin skin-name:) markup:
> 
> Markup('skin', 'fulltext',
>   '/\\(:skin\\s+([-\\w]+)\\s*:\\)/e',
>   "PZZ(SetSkin(\$pagename,'$1'))");
> 
> Combined with conditional markup we can show different skins for
> different 'audiences'.

That sounds very reasonable. It's just a matter of how to "set" the mode
(and remember it). The difference between the modes can probably be done
quite extensively using (:if mode ...:).

best
/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr






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