[pmwiki-users] Talk Pages

[Petko Yotov]

On 15/02/2018 19:09, Dominique Faure wrote:
> In PmWiki, Talk pages are strictly regular pages.
> 
> Its up to you to setup some kind of binding (usually a link) between a
> specific page and another talk-related one.
> 
> Group headers/footers (http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/GroupHeaders) 
> are
> convenient places where to insert such links.

On pmwiki.org, the page PmWiki.GroupFooter contains such a code 
(simplified for clarity):

(:if name *-Talk:)
This is a talk page for [[{(substr "{*$FullName}" 0 -5)}]].
(:else:)
This page may have a talk page: [[{*$FullName}-Talk]].
(:ifend:)

It uses a "conditional", "page variables" and "markup expressions" which 
are core PmWiki features mostly used by people who like to organize 
their wikis.


The page Cookbook.GroupFooter contains this (also simplified):

(:if name *-Talk:)
Talk page for the [[{*$BaseName}|+]] recipe ([[({*$BaseName}- )users]]).
(:elseif name *-Users:)
User notes for the [[{*$BaseName}|+]] recipe ([[({*$BaseName}- )talk]]).
(:elseif ! equal "{*$:Version}" "":)
Users: {*$Users}. You can [[{*$FullName}-Users?action=edit|add your 
name]].
(:ifend:)

The {*$BaseName} variable can be defined to hold a "base" page name for 
a number of related pages, placing the variable on any of these pages 
will display the base page, for example stripping the -Users or -Talk 
parts. Place that name in brackets, and you have a link to the base 
page.

Here is what we have defined on pmwiki.org:

   
$BaseNamePatterns['/-(Talk|Comments|Users|Archive|Talk-Archive|Ratings?)/i'] 
= '';

To obtain the base name, it removes parts from the current page name 
that end with a dash and Talk, Comments, and the other words you see.

(In a default installation, {*$BaseName} is the same as {*$FullName}, 
$BaseNamePatterns must be defined in config.php for the above to work.)

Oh, and the {*$Users} variable comes from an addon:
   http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/Rating2


Besides headers and footers, you can add such links in Site.PageActions 
or Group.PageActions pages, for example, instead of the existing 
[[{*$FullName}|View]] link, one could place:

* [[{*$BaseName}|Page]]
* [[{*$BaseName}-Talk|Talk]]
* [[{*$BaseName}-Users|Users]]
... then the edit/diff links

> On Thu, Feb 15, 2018 at 5:30 PM, Jim Syler <calion at mac.com> wrote:
>> Talk pages? This seems like a basic function of a wiki, and I

PmWiki is indeed a wiki, as in "tool for collaborative maintenance of 
websites", and has many features of other wiki engines (Wiki markup, 
Recent changes, Revision history). In its default installation PmWiki is 
result- or goal-oriented much more than process-oriented. The goal is a 
"website", not a "community wiki" or "encyclopedia written by visitors" 
-- you can create any kind of website, corporate, academic, personal or 
yes, a community wiki.

For many websites "Talk" pages are not required or needed, in trusted 
teams usernames and accountability need not to be enforced, and page 
history is limited to 10 years.

(As opposed to MediaWiki and other community-oriented wikis where the 
process is more important than the result and for legal reasons they 
must enforce usernames and store all history.)

See also http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PmWikiPhilosophy . Features 
that someone may need can always be implemented as addons, they are 
probably already in the Cookbook, perhaps even in different flavors.

>> see that PmWiki supports them, but there are no Talk pages associated 
>> with
>> the pages on my site, I don’t see how to install Talk pages, and 
>> searching
>> for “Talk Pages” on PmWiki just gets me a long list of actual Talk 
>> pages on
>> PmWiki, not anything about how to activate them. I feel like I’m 
>> missing
>> something simple and obvious. Help?

Thanks for this comment, we should really document this better.

Or if this should really be considered a basic wiki feature, we could 
add a config variable like $EnableTalkPages which when enabled would 
reveal a "Talk" link in Site.PageActions.

> I’m sorry for cluttering up the list, but I’m at my wit’s end.

Please continue, it is nice to get a fresh perspective to hopefully help 
us improve the software and the documentation and review our priorities.

Petko