[pmwiki-users] Re: Reason why pagetoc.php isn't used for Cookbook.Cookbook?

[John Rankin]

On Tuesday, 21 June 2005 10:52 AM, chr at home.se wrote:
>On 21 Jun 2005, John Rankin wrote:
>
>> In my head, I have started composing a message about wiki -> pdf,
>> which is very close to a beta 1 release. Meanwhile, let me just
>> note that I think it's going to be a case where group-wide
>> enabling is appropriate (site-wide would be nicer, but I agree
>> that this is not necessarily a good idea).
>
>Hi John... I can't make heads or tails of your post ;-)  Are you agreeing 
>about enabling pagetoc.php for the Cookbook group, or suggesting that it 
>should use the wiki->pdf stuff you're about to release?
>
My post was unclear -- sorry about that. 

Here's what I think I meant:

I agree with Patrick that enabling a particular recipe group-wide or
site-wide is potentially a problem. Visitors will reasonably expect 
a feature they see in action to work when they download and install
pmwiki itself. Once you enable one recipe, you potentially will 
want to enable more, which may or may not be mutually compatible, 
and a slide down a slippery slope begins. So enabling pagetoc on
its recipe page is fair and reasonable, but enabling it Cookbook-
wide could be problematic. Even though a page table of contents
for a structured page is in my view an essential visitor aid.

I disagree about maintaining page tocs manually. Why should I as
an author tell the computer something it already knows? And create
an opportunity for confusion when the toc and the contents are 
different. This may not happen overnight, but it *will* happen.
And I'm lazy so prefer the computer to do the work.

On the other hand, there are recipes where just enabling them
for a single page makes no sense, as it won't be possible to 
see the functionality. The wiki -> pdf recipe and wiki calendar 
recipe are examples. So I was giving a counter-example of a 
case where group-wide or site-wide activation of a recipe is 
appropriate and recipe-page-only activation is not appropriate.
I think economists call this the "counter-factual argument".

So given that it just took me 3 paragraphs to explain my one
line remark, it's not surprising that the original made no
sense. 

-- 
JR
--
John Rankin