[Pmwiki-users] comment/vote on proposed changes

[Patrick R. Michaud]

Looking ahead a bit at some upcoming releases, there will likely be a 
somewhat major change to the way PmWiki handles page formatting via 
the $PageHeaderFmt, $PageFooterFmt, etc. variables.  But before making
that major jump, there are a couple of minor changes and bugfixes on the 
table that I'd like to take care of first via one or two "stabilizing"
releases.  To this end, I'd like to hear comments on the proposed changes 
(positive or negative) before I commit them to a release.

The "minor" changes I see as being likely or possible for the next
release are:

1.  Search results by group  - this is the modification of having
search results organized with group headers that link to the group's
default page, as proposed by Ross Kowalski and John Rankin.  Assuming 
that people are in support of this feature, should PmWiki default to 
the old numbered-style result list or use the group-organized one?

2.  Move [[#name]] markup processing from $InlineReplacements to 
$LinkPatterns.  This will enable anchors containing WikiWords 
(currently such anchors cause problems w/o some special handling).  
Also the anchor HTML code will be updated to meet W3C HTML standards 
by including the closing </a> tag.

3.  Automatic inclusion of pgcust.php.  I think there is already broad
agreement for this change, but I'll mention it here for completeness.  I'm
intending that the pgcust.php module be enabled by default in stdconfig.php
unless disabled via $EnablePerGroupCust = 0; .  

4.  Special link processing for $VariableNames in wiki markup.  This
would be special-purpose markup solely for the purpose of improving the
PmWiki documentation.  Basically, any sequence that looks like
a PmWiki variable name (regex '/\$[A-Z]\w+/') would become a link
to the appropriate anchor in a documentation page if it exists, and
unchanged if the variable documenation doesn't exist.  I.e., $PageHeaderFmt
would be rendered as a link to the documentation for $PageHeaderFmt.
Since this is to support the PmWiki documentation this markup would
be enabled by default, but could be disabled with $EnableVariableMarkup=0; .
There is a longer description of this concept at
http://www.pmichaud.com/wiki/Development/VariableMarkup.

5.  Backticks in character strings.  John Rankin has suggested a scheme
where a backtick (` == accent grave, not a single quote) in the middle of
a word is inline replaced by an empty string.  Since inline replacements
occur after WikiWord and other link processing, this provides a 1-character
shortcut to avoid WikiWord links.  Thus Pm`Wiki and Ph`D would display
as "PmWiki" and "PhD" but not be WikiWords.  Backticks in other contexts
would be unchanged, thus `Hello' would be left alone.


Other items listed on the Development pages (edit previews, page renames,
etc.) are still slated for development, but I wanted to get these smaller
issues out of the way quickly if possible.  Again, I'm seeking comments
supporting or against the above proposals to help me decide when/if
to include them (and to understand their potential impacts on existing
installations).

Thanks in advance,

Pm