[pmwiki-announce] PmWiki 2.0.0

[Patrick R. Michaud]

At long last, I'm very pleased to announce the official release of
PmWiki 2.0.0, now available at http://www.pmwiki.org/pub/pmwiki .

PmWiki 2.0 has been in development for well over a year, with more
than eighty development and beta releases.  In addition, the
cookbook for 2.0 continues to expand, and currently has over 200
recipes and more on the way.

'''Not available at press time:''' For those who may be concerned
that their "must-have feature" didn't make it into the 2.0.0 release,
don't be.  The 2.0.0 release isn't the end of development, but
just the stable basis for the next set of features and improvements.
Even if some features (e.g., discuss/comments pages, table of
contents, authorization groups, faster backlinks/categories)
aren't in the 2.0.0 release, I'm comfortable that we're at a point
where these features can be added as 2.0.x releases with minimal
impact to existing 2.0 sites.  And if not, then we'll start on 2.1.  :-)

'''Upgrading to 2.0.0:''' Many sites have been keeping relatively
up-to-date with the latest 2.0 beta releases; for most of these
sites upgrading to 2.0.0 is a minor upgrade (but see the notes below).
For sites running beta versions of PmWiki older than 2.0.beta44,
the upgrade may require a bit of extra work -- check the ReleaseNotes
for more details.  For sites running 1.x or 0.6 versions of PmWiki,
see http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/UpgradingFromPmWiki1 for
tips on successfully migrating the site to PmWiki 2.0.0.

PmWiki 2.0.0 does have some changes over the previous (beta55)
release:

* Lots of changes and improvements to the documentation.  Some documentation pages still need work, but the documentation is now sufficiently far along that I'm comfortable with making the release.

* The release comes with a new default skin, matching the one currently available at http://www.pmwiki.org.  For those sites that wish to retain the old skin, it is available from http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/PmWikiV1Skin .

* The release comes with a new default skin, matching the one currently available at http://www.pmwiki.org.  For those sites that wish to retain the old skin, it is available from http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/PmWikiV1Skin .

* The storage format for pages in wiki.d/ has changed somewhat.  PmWiki 2.0.0 can seamlessly read and interact with pages stored in previous formats, but any external scripts that may attempt to read wiki.d/ files directly will need to be adjusted to understand the new format.  In particular, the $Newline variable has been deprecated in this release and is no longer used.  (Sites that need file-level compatibility with previous versions can set a value for $Newline and PmWiki 2.0 will use that, however.)

* Deleted pages now have a ",del-1234567890" suffix instead of just the timestamp.

* The Site.SideBar is now unprotected by default.  Other pages in the Site group continue to be protected against edits and require the admin password to unlock.

* Several relatively small improvements and bug fixes -- see the ChangeLog for details.

'''What's next:'''  Next I plan to work on getting internationalizations updated to 2.0.0 -- many i18n items "broke" in beta44 and need to be cleaned up.  In conjunction with this will be page improvements and cleanups on pmwiki.org, as well as addressing outstanding PITS entries.  After that will come more feature enhancements, including comments pages, section edits, and improved indexing/search capabilities.

----

'''Thank you:''' My sincere and humble thanks to everyone who has contributed so much of their time, ideas, opinions, writing, and code to PmWiki.  I notice that the PmWiki:Contributors page is way out of date, so if you've helped at all with PmWiki core development, don't be shy or modest -- feel free to add yourself to the list and be associated with an outstanding group.

And, as always, comments, suggestions, questions, and bug reports can be reported to the mailing list or the PmWiki Issue Tracking System.

Thanks again,

Pm