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

[Eemeli Aro]

2009/6/29 Oliver Betz <list_ob at gmx.net>:
> Eemeli Aro wrote:
>>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.

True, but just a new sample-config.php might not be enough. I think we
should look at the way config files are read in a bit more depth, and
perhaps come up with something better.

My own situation with config files is probably about as complex as it
can get, here's a list of the groups of settings that I use/need on my
wikifarm:
  1. initial farm-wide config
  2. initial local config
  3. post-local farm-wide config
  4. authuser.php
  5. post-authuser farm-wide config
  6. post-authuser local config
  7. ResolvePageName
  8. page- & group-specific config
  9. stdconfig.php

I think some of the complexity could be reduced by having a hook or
hooks to which add initialization functions that are run eg. before &
after stdconfig.php -- something like $EditFunctions but for
initialisation.

>>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".

Ah, but the trick here is that if we do have a "default bundle", we
might be able to even move stuff from the core to this bundle. From
just a quick look, the ones I'd consider include at least creole.php,
vardoc.php, and wikiwords.php.

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

My own take on this is <http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/Tabulate>.
It won't maintain the alignment markup from a spreadsheet, but it'll
at least let you define that formatting for each row and column of a
tab-delimited table that you can copy back and forth between PmWiki
and eg. Excel.

eemeli