[Pmwiki-users] Mail interface for adding to pages (was Action orform a new page)

Steven Leite steven_leite
Thu Feb 5 07:22:45 CST 2004


Just my two bits:

> Purpose: Be able to take the important ideas from a new or mailing list
> and "store" them on a wiki so that they don't get lost.
>
> Items:
>  * This should be quick and simple to do.
>  * You do it by forwarding the relevant post
>  * Do a 'one-way-pass' over the mail, adding simple markup that
>    indicates what should go where.
>  * The receiving software do simple reformatting of '> ' etc
>  * It's not important that the formatted result in the wiki is perfect

I'd like to add that:

* It's not important to identify the user beyond how the wiki currently
identifies users, for example, I think taking the information from the
"From:" field in the email and placing in the "Author:" field (such as is
now happening in the Recent Changes) is sufficient (for now).

> > Other ideas or comments related to this?  What sorts of markup
directives
> > and other features are needed or desirable?
>
> How about using this markup for the forwarded message:
>    append     ::= '[[append' +ws page-reference ['#' anchor] *ws ']]'
>    append-end ::= '[[append-end]]'
>
>    prepend     ::= '[[prepend' +ws page-reference ['#' anchor] *ws ']]'
>    prepend-end ::= '[[prepend-end]]'
>
> where the optional anchor allows us to add text before/after that anchor.

I'll just remind everybody (developers!) to try not thinking in computer
programming language, and start thinking in USER language.  Go down the hall
and ask your neighbour (who knows nothing about computers):  If you were
going to send an email to a computer, what would you write in the email so
that the computer would understand what you want done with it?  I doubt you
will get any reply containing the words append, prepend, anchor, etc.  It
would be much simpler like:

========================

Instructions:  Put this in the PmWiki category
Title:  My New Development Idea about XYZ
My Idea:  A bunch of text describing the idea.

========================

We could then take that and build upon it to make it wiki friendly, like:

========================

[[WikiTite]]
PmWiki/XYZIdea
[[WikiPageContents]]
Wiki documents starts here

========================

I know my syntax isn't that great, but it's just to get the wheels turning.
My only input is that it should be as user friendly as possible.  Try to use
existing markup if possible so we don't have to force people to learn new
stuff and just use the old (familiar) stuff (with perhaps a slight twist).

Regards,

Steven Leite





More information about the pmwiki-users mailing list