[pmwiki-users] ZAP philosophical questions...

[The Editor]

On 4/11/07, Benoit Dutilleul <benoit.dutilleul at googlemail.com> wrote:

> As far as I'm concerned, I like your idea to visualize and control the
> recipes from the ZAPConfig page.

As noted recently, it's already partly functional.  But I'll be
reworking it just a bit in the next release to automatically lock
everything if the page exists (unless specifically enabled for a
page).

> > 2) To make it easier for users to setup ZAP forms on their site, I'm
> > still toying with the idea of a ZAP super markup--something really
>
> For the moment, I'm using the (:include:) entry to do this and it works very
> well. As far as I'm concerned, I don't really see the added value of an
> extra "super markup".

Hmmm.  That saves one problem!

> I am really impressed by your tool and the pace at which you progress. Yet,
> I must say that versions are changing very fast and there are some pretty
> important changes in the syntax every time. For me, that's a very big
> problem because I've got a couple of websites running on my farm and when I
> update ZAP, I can't re-test every script of every installation. This has not
> been a too big problem but from now on, I'm going to need more stability if
> I want to use the recipe on interactive production sites.

Yes, I'm having the same problem myself.  I wrote ZAP for my own site,
and can't seem to get around to updating it.  I've been trying to put
a freeze on new features for a while, and just focus on debugging etc.
 But everytime I start working on my site, I realize ZAP needs a
better way to handle something.  Maybe this release will be the magic
one!

> Thus, I suggest to spend a bit more time defining and freezing a standard
> syntax and perhaps, write "test scripts" to test it automatically for every
> new version.

Can you give me an idea what you mean by this?  I'm thinking better
would be simple upgrade instructions, like search "emailnews" and
change to "email_news".
Or perhaps an announcement list?  A beta and standard release version,
like PmWiki does? Well, let's hope this will be the last significant
change for a while...

> I support a syntax consistent with the one defined for pmwiki pagelist. Even
> if it is a couple of letters longer, it is consistent and - in my opinion -
> much clearer.

I will do that later.  Just haven't had time yet. Also waiting to see
how Pm will do his script, and how it will affect zap.  Please I'd
have to upgrade all my snippets!

> As far as the new extra functionalities are concerned, I would prefer to
> consolidate and contribute to the testing and debugging of existing
> functionalities before developing much more. There is already a lot with
> what you've done. As far as I'm concern, this would also give me the chance
> to share with the community some useful scripts (I've got a multi-thread
> forum running, password reminder, email validation, etc).

If you send me some of those I can put them up as snippets and handle
the upgrades...

> I would also suggest you group extensions by the level of stability and by
> the level of potential "danger" for the installation. Your proposals could
> have very useful applications but you don't want a new user to mess up his
> whole installation (or perhaps another site on the farm) with such
> functionalities.

This is a good idea, and I hope the ZAPConfig system will help with
this.  But I have decided against the multiple file downloads.  I want
to try and just stick to two files.

> Thanks for this amazing work. Cheers !

Thanks for the encouragement.  Will try and see ZAP transition from
beta to stable after the next release.  : )

Cheers,
Dan