[pmwiki-users] ZAP? (Was: Behavior of Profiles/Profiles)

Pico Ben-Amotz pmwiki at ben-amotz.com
Wed Oct 17 09:03:24 CDT 2007


On 10/16/07, Ben Stallings <ben at interdependentweb.com> wrote:
> Donald Z. Osborn wrote:
> > 2b) Enabling search by author contributions (not clear how to do this:
> > backlinks from Profile/[name] just show the (All)RecentChanges pages
>
> http://pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/AuthorContribution may be what you're
> looking for.
>
> > 2c) Possibly using the profiles as more as bio pages, IOW, making
> >
> > Any advice, experience with any of the above?
>
> http://pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/MemberMgmt does an excellent job of
> using profiles as bio pages... it automatically creates the pages from a
> user's registration form, while still allowing them to be edited as wiki
> pages for the addition of photos, etc.
>
> I am planning to release a bundle of PmWiki+ZAP within the next week
> that demonstrates how ZAP can be used as a CMS, with all the forms
> already in place so that you can just unzip and play without all that
> tedious mucking about with "snippets."  But don't hold your breath... my
> self-imposed deadlines are usually off by a few weeks!  :-)  --Ben S.

When thinking about ZAP there has always been a disconnect between its
potential and its execution.  Early on you recognized and embraced the
potential of ZAP.  Others of us treated ZAP like a suspicious
attachment from an unknown source.  The concern, at least for me, has
always been that ZAP was created, and recreated, so quickly and so
often, based on an inspired and prolific vision that was not grounded
in experience, consistency and perspective.  In the end, when ZAP's
interesting author exited just as abruptly as he had entered, the
recipe fell into a state of limbo.  Just visit the page you cite
(Cookbook/MemberMgmt ) and click on any of the links to the snippets
that you refer to and you will see that they point to non-existent
pages on a "zapbeta" install on the fast.st site, e.g.

http://www.fast.st/zapbeta/index.php?n=Snippets/Register?action=source

The purpose of this post isn't to knock ZAP's author or his
contributions, but to challenge you to look beneath the potential of
ZAP and address the issue of its design, execution, support and
future.  Your plans to release a bundle of PmWiki+ZAP to demonstrate
its use as a CMS sounds interesting, but that doesn't address
underlying concerns about ZAP itself.  Do you have any plans to take a
step back and take a fresh look at ZAP?  Should it be scaled back into
some smaller recipes with vetted code and architecture?

I realize and respect how much you contribute to PmWiki and feel
uncomfortable suggesting that you should do more.  But this is really
more about your vision and support for ZAP.  You need to recognize the
underlying disconnect and decide whether this is important enough to
you to do something about.  Of course, it doesn't have to be you, but
you are the only one these days who seems to be making writing recipes
intended to work with ZAP.

Pico



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