[pmwiki-users] [PATCH] create links to individual changes on history page

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 02:16:38PM -0400, Scott Connard wrote:
> >Thinking a bit larger for a second, I've been working on improving
> >date/time handling throughout PmWiki, primarily to be able to also
> >address the issue of viewing a page as of some point in its history.
> >Thus one would be able to say something like
> >..../Main/HomePage?when=2006-01-01 to see the version of
> >Main.HomePage that existed as of January 1, 2006.
> 
> This is going to lead to major complications as you'll need to  
> acquire includes and uploads as of that date too...local  
> configuration issues might also be an issue....  As one who works in  
> the Configuration Management field, you will never be able to  
> completely display a page as it was on a certain date.  

Excellent points.  The ?when= feature is highly requested, though, see
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PITS/00220 .  There are a number of people
who would probably want the "view as of date" feature even if it's
not perfectly correct -- who are primarily interested in seeing the
content of a page even if it's not exactly what appeared on that
particular date.

> By pretending  
> to do so, you will only invite trouble as more people find more and  
> more things that you need to deal with trying to match the look at a  
> certain date (skin changes, pmwiki core changes, etc, etc.).  What if  
> older diffs have been eliminated from some of the files.

We can always disable (:include:), (:pagelist:), Attach:, etc., for
the ?when= option.  (If the diff history doesn't go back that far in
time, we simply return a message indicating that's the case.)

And we can put enough caveats and warnings in place that indicate 
that what the viewer is seeing is PmWiki's "best guess" at the
version of the page without guaranteeing its fidelity.

Thanks,

Pm