[pmwiki-users] SpellChecker on a Farm

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Sun Sep 17 12:09:25 CDT 2006


[Does anyone besides me think "Snakes on a Plane" whenever seeing
the subject "SpellChecker on a Farm" over and over again?  ;-) ]

> Pico wrote:
> : JB wrote:
> : > Pico wrote:
> : > : I revised your edit to the documentation because there was no need
> : > : to provide different sets of include lines for farms and non-farms; all
> : > : installs can use the same line:
> : > : include_once("$FarmD/cookbook/spellchecker.php");
> : > 
> : > I do not think that is right.  Sometimes a local wiki which uses farm
> : > recipes has one recipe that only it uses. 
> :
> : I don't agree that this (and, for that matter, every other recipe)
> : should have two different installation instructions for farm and
> : non-farm installs just because someone with a farm might want to
> : physically place the recipe in a field, instead of simply invoking it
> : from the local field config.
> : Does anyone think that JB has the better approach here and, if so,
> : should it be adopted for all recipes?

Here's what I think:

First, I absolutely do not want to see two different farm/non-farm
installation instructions in every recipe.  

Almost by definition, administering a wikifarm implies that the farm 
administrator be (or become) a bit more familiar with the way that 
filesystem paths and urls work in their particular farm environment.
So, the standard instructions for a basic recipe ought to be for the 
simple non-farm case, and farm administrators should be making the 
adjustment to use include_once("$FarmD/...") as appropriate.  This 
is consistent with the way PmWiki's documentation is set up.

Of course, if the recipe is primarily intended only for farm environments,
then it's okay to use $FarmD/... for everything.

On Sun, Sep 17, 2006 at 11:42:03AM -0400, Scott Connard wrote:
> What concerns me a little more is the need to edit the source to change
> "$PubDirUrl" to "$FarmPubDirUrl" for the SpellChecker script.  Is this
> required for many other cookbook scripts?  Is there a way to engineer 
> a common solution for this problem?  

It doesn't happen often, as can be seen from the fact that there aren't
many messages about such on the mailing list.

Yes, there are ways to for recipes to make it easier on wikifarms.

Option 1:  Use configuration variables
--------------------------------------
One easy way to deal with this is for the recipe itself to have its own
configuration variable as opposed to always using $PubDirUrl or
$FarmPubDirUrl.  Note that this is what PmWiki tends to do for its
scripts and modules.

In the case of the spellchecker.php recipe, it'd be a simple matter 
for it to do:

    SDV($SpellerUrl, "$PubDirUrl/speller");

and replace all instances of "$PubDirUrl/speller" or 
"$FarmPubDirUrl/speller" in the recipe with "$SpellerUrl".  

Someone using spellcheck.php in a farm then sets a custom value
for $SpellerUrl prior to including the recipe:

    $SpellerUrl = "$FarmPubDirUrl/speller";
    include_once("$FarmD/cookbook/spellchecker.php");


Option 2: Have the recipe detect when it's in a farm context
------------------------------------------------------------
I haven't ever tried this, but one possibility might to have a recipe
detect when it's being called in a farm context, by comparing its
filename to the $FarmD variable.  Thus, spellchecker.php might do:

    if (strncmp(__FILE__, $FarmD, strlen($FarmD)) == 0) 
      SDV($SpellerUrl, "$FarmPubDirUrl/speller");
    else
      SDV($SpellerUrl, "$PubDirUrl/speller");

Thus, if a script does include_once("$FarmD/cookbook/spellchecker.php") the
spellchecker.php script will detect that it's been called with the $FarmD
prefix and use the $FarmPubDirUrl value, otherwise it uses $PubDirUrl.
Note that in either case I'm initializing the configuration variable
using SDV so that the administrator can override the default.


One thing I do not want to see happen is that this sort of
thing become required for recipes -- it can be listed as a guideline,
but I don't want to be rejecting or criticizing recipe submissions
simply because the author didn't consider wikifarms.  

> Should ALL code referencing $PubDirUrl look in $PubDirUrl first and 
> then failing that look in $FarmPubDirUrl (if it is different than $PubDirUrl)?

Here lies part of the confusion between files and urls -- how exactly
does a script look in a url (such as $PubDirUrl)?  

Pm


P.S.:  I think the spellchecker recipe ought to standardize on either
"speller" or "spellchecker" for its names, and not use both. 
I'll probably rewrite the recipe to do that, and to incorporate the
$FarmD detection as given above.






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