[pmwiki-users] some notes on docs

[Radu]

Apologies if you receive this twice. My eudora just crashed and it may have 
sent another copy.

Last week I was too busy on one of my projects, so I respond now to an 
older message

(BTW, I'm not a sysadmin, I'm doing R&D to support language and culture 
preservation in some Native American bands)

At 05:17 PM 3/14/2005, Neil Herber wrote:
>At 2005-03-14  03:48 PM -0600, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
>>Anyway, this is just a ramble and a call for any brainstorms or
>>other suggestions people might have.
>>
>>And please, let's not use "menu" or "meal".  :-)
>
>My objection to "menu" was voiced last week, but I find the term "meal" to 
>be equally indigestible.

I agree. We've been talking about bundles for a while now; a travelling 
cook can have in a bundle recipes from a cookbook, as well as some other 
assorted tricks to make the recipes fit well, right? I think that's the 
analogy I'm going for.

Meal and menu break the cookbook/recipe analogies anyway:
* a meal is *the result* of several recipes, including the ingredients, the 
work applied and the final touches of the cook - which are never present in 
any recipe,
(sort of like existing wikis out there) and
* a menu is *a choice of results* of recipes,
(sort of like an applied set of meal elements - abstract wiki features, maybe)

And now on to Neil's excellent ideas:

>1) Marketing - what major features does it have, what hardware/software do 
>I need to run it, what is it particularly good at?

See:
* http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PmWikiFeatures
* http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Platforms
* http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PmWikiPhilosophy

I brought all the ones which weren't there under the ad-hoc About page:
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PmWiki
... and placed the important Features page in the main sidebar.

I hope Pm won't mind :)

>2) Getting started - what is the minimal amount I need to do to get it 
>running?

That would be pretty much:
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Installation with its following page,
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/InitialSetupTasks

>3) Author reference - how do I get pages to look the way I want?
>
>4) Admin reference -  how do I keep authors from doing stupid things, how 
>do I make their job easier?

Ah, yes, the Administration section of the cookbook would indeed deserve a 
page of its own, or even a bit of organization... later.

I started the move that way by adding a rather obvious piece of data:
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Users

because http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/Audiences , though excellently 
written is a bit too long for the casual 'the fax, maam, only the fax' readers.

In fact, many requests on PITS show that the Audiences page is not read 
much. I added a link to it on the PITS page, just in case.

>5) Fancy stuff - what kind of plug in modules can I add?

We're pretty much there in trying to cross-reference them using categories 
(though help is always welcome :). Besides, the features page is offering 
another, terser, better organized index to various functional recipes.

So what do you think, Neil, did I address all your concerns?


Cheers,
Radu
(www.monicsoft.net)