[pmwiki-users] Proposal: a default bundle for PmWiki

Oliver Betz list_ob at gmx.net
Mon Jun 29 04:07:54 CDT 2009


Eemeli Aro wrote:

[...]

>around to it, but I do think there's a need for a more feature-rich
>distribution of PmWiki.

Ack. And that's not (only) "featuritis" but some essential usability
improvements are possible with little effort. Your list is a great
idea.

>As it is now, PmWiki is an incredibly simple, yet powerful system. For
>configurability, this is excellent. However, there's the problem:
>after the really easy install, there's the really easy install and
>configuration of the 15 cookbook recipes that you also need.

Slight disagree: As "jdd" wrote, editing the config file has grown
more complicated as dependencies make the inclusion order relevant. A
well documented sample-config.php could make it easier for the novice.

>This isn't actually a big problem for a power user (as I guess quite a
>few of us on this list are...), it's a problem for the beginner who

...and among "PmWiki beginners" we find very different skill levels.

>wants those features and needs to find them before installing them. I
>believe a community-nominated bundle of pre-configured recipes would
>help significantly in PmWiki adoption.

maybe some of the mentioned recipes are even "core candidates".

[...]

<http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/Bundle>

Your list addressed important fields:

Housekeeping, monitoring: Attachtable is useful to find "orphaned"
files and it saves me starting a shell or ftp session. IMO essential
and therefore a core candidate. InlineDiff lets me detect small
changes in larger blocks. RecentUploads shows me whether people
uploaded some inacceptable stuff.

Novice support, convenience: Attachtable is also nice for novices not
considering a suitable file name early enough. CaseCorrection can save
inadvertent "duplicates" (I would be more radical to _force_ portable
page names). I added NotsavedWarning to the list since I found that
novices didn't observe the "you need to enter a author name" warning
and they navigated away from editing by accident many times.

Format conversion, import/export: ConvertHTML is promising. What I'm
still missing, is a simple _and_ powerful way to import tables with
formatting (justification).

What I'm also missing is a better support for table _editing_.
SilverStripe has an _exciting_ table editor. And it supports cut/paste
of tables (although not formatted). TableEdit didn't work for me.

Oliver




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