[pmwiki-users] RFC: PITS 00701 -- WikiFarm confusion

[H. Fox]

On 3/15/06, Neil Herber <nospam at eton.ca> wrote:
> Any of the other terms that spring to mind (or have been suggested so
> far) have their own baggage that they drag along: master/slaves,
> mother/daughters, father/sons, webs, and so on.

I agree.  Something would need to be significantly better to merit
changing the existing terminology, particularly now that PmWiki is out
of beta.

> If no-one has any strong objections, I will put these definitions at
> the top of the WikiFarms page:
> * A farm (or wiki farm) is a collection of two or more wiki fields
> that use one copy of the PmWiki code.
> * A field is a single wiki with a unique URL. Each field lives in its
> own directory.
> * The "home field" is where most of the PmWiki code (particularly
> pmwiki.php) lives.

It's confusing to to have a "home field" that doesn't even need to be
in the web document tree.  When the main installation isn't a wiki
itself (with a URL, local wikipages, and its own config.php) it's not
a field.

Put another way, if a field is a wiki with a unique URL (which it is)
then the main installation isn't a field unless you add a config.php
and a writable wiki.d/ .

That said, how about simple wording change which, wile subtle, seems
to make a big difference:

    Rather than calling fields "Wiki Fields"
    or even fields, call them "field wikis".

That's what they are, right?  The main installation (whatever it'
should be called) can be a field wiki or not.

Hagan