[pmwiki-users] Supporting different modes in default pmwiki

Bronwyn Boltwood arndis at gmail.com
Wed Aug 10 00:10:56 CDT 2005


On 8/9/05, Neil Herber <nospam at eton.ca> wrote:
> At 2005-08-09  01:12 PM -0400, Radu is rumored to have said:
> >* display view (AFAICT most people agree with this one)
> 
> This is one "view" that I think deserves prominence above the others, since
> makes PmWiki a very convenient CMS. I use it as such already, but it
> doesn't bother me (or my audiences apparently) that there are "wiki"
> vestiges visible on the website so all I have done is edit-protect some pages.

This is exactly what I want it for, so it shan't be neglected.  I'd
already been using the tools available to turn the development copy of
my portfolio into a stealth wiki.  I could password-protect the site,
and I could surround my action links with (:if auth foo:), and when it
gets moved to the live server I will set up clean urls.  But now my
supposedly easy-to-edit website is a pain in the rear to edit.  All
the links that would ask me for the edit password aren't available
until I put in the edit password.

Display view is meant to solve that. It'll probably require the
login/logout recipe or something like it.
 
> It would be nice to have a recipe (it may exist - I haven't looked) that
> tells admins how to create websites for the outside world that are wikis
> for the content managers. It is really just a combination of things like
> switchable skins, user authorizations , and clean URLs. But maybe that's
> what you are calling a view
 
I was planning to write such a thing for the Pukka docs.  The view
doesn't set the passwords or clean the urls for you.  What it does do
is solve the problem that I was having above.  I'll hit Login, give my
password, and the wiki takes its disguise off so that I can work on
it. No more (:if auth foo:)s around the controls unless I actually
need them.

> I do wonder if some of the enthusiasm and energy would be more helpful to
> the PmWiki cause if it was directed to more mundane things, such as
> cleaning up the current docs. However, that is strictly my view (???!!!)
> and should not be taken as any criticism of existing efforts. In
> particular, the view/mode discussion was migrated to a PmWiki doc page
> faster than any other item I have seen discussed here, and that is great!

Um, er, it's much easier to spend time on something you're passionate
about, especially when you have too much to do.  Take me as an
example: I'm supposed to be finding a job I'd care about and be
satisfied in.  I'm supposed to be networking, which scares me silly,
so instead I am fixing up my portfolio site, because that will truly
help with the jobhunt.  Improving the PmWiki documentation is not only
avoidance of real work, but avoidance of the useful procrastion of
real work, and my self-discipline kicks in, saying "Thou shalt not
have more than one level of procrastination!"  I can justify writing
letters in the view threads, because having views will solve several
problems, including ones related to the job hunt, and it hooks into my
passion to make stuff work better, instead of just describing how it
works.  And if I let everyone decide how they work without me, and
then found that they didn't work as I wanted, they'd tell me that I
really should have said earlier.

Invoking people's passions works wonders for productivity. I'd been
getting worried about how little I cared about most of the topics
going by in pmwiki-users, and then boom, views happened.

Bronwyn




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