[pmwiki-devel] RFC: Blogger

[DaveG]

Over the past few weeks I've been working on a blogging system that 
provides basic blog functionality using only PmWiki functionality, with 
minimal code. The goal was to provide all basic blog functionality in a 
way that was friendly to the Author, and provided separation between 
data and display. Over the next few weeks I'll be updating some skins to 
be compatible with Blogger.

I've put up the first Alpha version at Cookbook/Blogger, and there's a 
demo running at wiki.solidgone.org/Blogger/Main. The admin password is 
"bloggeradmin", and the edit password is "bloggeredit" -- feel free to 
create new blog entries, and add/approve/delete comments.

I'm looking for feedback on the approach I've taken, the use of PmWiki 
functions, and general coding. The code is pretty simple, most of it is 
PmWiki configuration, but I've put together some developer notes as a 
quick guide (Cookbook/Blogger-DeveloperDocs).

As well as general feedback, I'd like specific advice on:
1] I recommend locking the wiki down with an Edit password. However, in 
order to allow comment posting by users not logged in, Blogger sets the 
Edit password to "" for comment posting only. Is there a better way to 
do this?

2] I store blog entry attributes as PTV's. Since I want to allow PmWiki 
markup in the main body I change the PTV markup to (::...:...::) for the 
entrybody, replacing (:entrybody:...:) with (::entrybody:...::) using an 
ROS entry. The only way I can see to determine the true end of the PTV 
field (the :) ) is to search for the last occurrence -- other 
occurrences might simply be closing user entered markup. This works 
fine, until I need to add a new PVT, which is added to the end of 
existing blog entries, throwing everything off. Any better ideas for 
locating the close to entrybody?

3] I provide a field for entry of an Author, but don't store this as a 
PTV. Rather I change the PmWiki page level Author attribute. Is this a 
'bad thing'?

All feedback welcomed.

  ~ ~ Dave