[pmwiki-users] RE: Fixed: Error in cookbook rename function

[John Rankin]

On Friday, 27 May 2005 12:26 PM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
>On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 12:10:50AM +0200, Dirk Blaas wrote:
>> To avoid the problem of incompatibility with next beta's of PmWiki, i would
>> vote for the rename function to be promoted to the core functionality. I
>> think it offers very basic functionality. 
>
>This is just a side note about "the core functionality", cookbook scripts,
>and releases...
>
>"Promoting rename into the core" doesn't really do anything by 
>itself to avoid incompatibility -- it just increases 
>someone's workload (typically mine) whenever a new release is about 
>to be made.  In short, to do this I have to either
>   1.  assume responsibility for ongoing maintenance of the rename script
>   2.  coordinate releases with whoever is keeping the script
>up to date

A case could be made for making the 'core' smaller rather than bigger:
- wherever one draws the line between core and add-on, some change in
  the core may break some add-on

- the more functions there are in the core, the more places there are
  for a change in the core to break an add-on

- one person's core function is another person's gratuitous feature

- incompatibilities between cookbook add-ons can be resolved locally,
  rather than centrally, or just accepted 

>
>This isn't to say that we can't place rename in the core, or that
>I'm not willing to maintain it--it just means that simply designating
>something as core doesn't really solve incompatibility as much as it
>shifts responsibility and workloads.

Yes. Moving something into the core just moves work from one time, 
place and person to another, and can create bottlenecks in the 
process. I'm generally against the idea of giving Patrick more work.

As I understand it:
In the case of rename and its friends, the problem arose from a
conceptual change in the purpose of PmWiki's 'FPL' functions. It 
used to be that you gave these a list of pages and got back a
formatted list. Now, you give them a list selection rule and get
back a formatted list. The FPL functions build the list for you.

Unfortunately, AFAIK, 'give me a list of all unqualified links 
on this page' is not (yet) a recognised list selection rule.
So instead of using a suitable FPL function, rename and its
friends now do their own thing.

In my experience:
- this kind of thing happens fairly regularly

- it's usually not a big deal to fix

- the changes are usually PmWiki improvements (although I think
  in this case the improvements could have been made without
  changing the FPL functions' purpose (?))

And I'm glad the problem seems to be fixed (for now).

-- 
JR
--
John Rankin