[pmwiki-users] ZAP philosophical questions...

Benoit Dutilleul benoit.dutilleul at googlemail.com
Wed Apr 11 16:33:22 CDT 2007


2007/4/11, The Editor <editor at fast.st>:
>
> (...)
>
> Thus, I suggest to spend a bit more time defining and freezing a standard
> > syntax and perhaps, write "test scripts" to test it automatically for
> every
> > new version.
>
> Can you give me an idea what you mean by this?  I'm thinking better
> would be simple upgrade instructions, like search "emailnews" and
> change to "email_news".
> Or perhaps an announcement list?  A beta and standard release version,
> like PmWiki does? Well, let's hope this will be the last significant
> change for a while...


Currently, there are several ways to write some ZAP commands. Example:
(:zap datapage="{$:MyPage}":)
(:zap datapage='{$:MyPage}':)
(:zap datapage={$:MyPage}:)
For the previous example, all 3 may work but for more complex expressions
(and in particular for conditionals), I think it is necessary to have a
syntax "guaranteed to work" because sometimes, the only way to get a script
to work is by trial and error. I also think that conditionals should output
a message if the test result is empty to facilitate debugging.

The test scripts would use of the reference syntax and allow to
automatically check that each elementary functionality is working properly
after a new release.

As far as the upgrade instructions are concerned, I would prefer the syntax
to converge for good at one point not to have to go through all my scripts
to see which ones are using the entry that has been updated. That would also
cause a lot of extra work to keep the documentation, tutorials and the
snippets up-to-date. I really suggest you think about each functionality and
freeze the syntax step-by-step (which still allows you to change the way you
program the relevant operation).

> As far as the new extra functionalities are concerned, I would prefer to
> > consolidate and contribute to the testing and debugging of existing
> > functionalities before developing much more. There is already a lot with
> > what you've done. As far as I'm concern, this would also give me the
> chance
> > to share with the community some useful scripts (I've got a multi-thread
> > forum running, password reminder, email validation, etc).
>
> If you send me some of those I can put them up as snippets and handle
> the upgrades...


I've got some scripts still using zapdata, others with the previous time
markup, etc. Moreover, there are pieces of code a bit everywhere in some
pages, footers, etc. With the new release, nothing is working anymore
(Hahaha) ! That's no big deal because, just like you, I'm still trying to
find the best way to put everything together for my projects but I'll need
more stability when I go into production.
As far as the scripts I'm talking about are concerned, I will update them
with the reference syntax, translate them in English and document them as
soon as it has converged. If you want, I can also give you admin rights on
my "R&D" wiki ;)

> I would also suggest you group extensions by the level of stability and by
> > the level of potential "danger" for the installation. Your proposals
> could
> > have very useful applications but you don't want a new user to mess up
> his
> > whole installation (or perhaps another site on the farm) with such
> > functionalities.
>
> This is a good idea, and I hope the ZAPConfig system will help with
> this.  But I have decided against the multiple file downloads.  I want
> to try and just stick to two files.


Yep. That's another good way of doing it. You could provide beginners with a
ZAPConfig page disabling the "dangerous" features.

Another idea: the messaging system could be improved by discriminating 2
types of messages : user-directed messages (ex. : please fill in the field
"Name") and admin-directed messages (ex. : Form posted. Values saved.).
Admins would see all messages when validating and users would only see
user-directed messages.

Cheers,

Benoit
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