[pmwiki-users] Re: Perfection and Menus (WAS: on over-bundling) . . .

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 05:03:02PM -0500, Radu wrote:
> Not much. But the steps to take if you want to enable a gui bar are 
> different than for adding any other recipe. 

But not any different than enabling or disabling other features
that use the $EnableXXX convention.


> And anyway, if they're 0
> disabled, why are they bundled in the first place? If your answer is 'for 
> convenience', then why not bundle lota of other often used recipes - and 
> leave them disabled?

Well, it comes down to two very practical considerations: 
(1) If a feature is globally enabled on pmwiki.org, then I think it's
    a good candidate to be in the distribution, if only so that
    someone installing PmWiki for the first time can easily get
    their wiki to act like what they saw at pmwiki.org
(2) Some features have dependencies in the order in which they are 
    loaded or executed -- in these cases it's often easier if I
    pre-configure certain features.

A third consideration is whether the feature is likely to be used
as a basis for other recipes and features.  In this case it's useful
to bring something into the core if only to provide (and commit to) a
standard that others can reliably build from.  (The GUI bar falls
into this category, as will user authorizations.)

Beyond that, almost any feature could be considered "extra" to someone,
including search, trails, categories, etc.  I just measure the
relative utility of the feature versus the difficulty it might
pose an admin to install (PmWikiPhilosophy #5) and take my best
guess from there. And nearly every core feature can be easily 
disabled if desired.

Pm