RE: [Schematics-development] Hosting of the cookbook

[Anton v. S. <an...@ap...>]

MJ Ray wrote:
> TWiki suffers from semantically-significant line noise.

In that sense, how is it different from any other wiki that supports text
markup?  In the end, it's just a format, which is parseable and
transformable.

There are at least two reasons we're interested in this format: (1) like
other wiki formats, it has proved in practice to be easy for people to
deal with and produce content with; (2) it's supported by an
infrastructure that offers various features which we want (enumerated in
one of my last few posts).

> The WebIt sources were ignored and forgotten about,
> but are basically easy to read and comprehend.

IMO, the wiki format is less cluttered and easier to deal with for the
purposes of actually writing and editing the content of recipes.  For
example, we no longer have to wrap each paragraph in a (paragraph [...])
expression.

You previously wrote "I have been put off [updating the Cookbook] because
of the need to learn things I don't know and something I won't use
commercially (WebIt)".  Perhaps you feel the same way about Twiki, but
then the same would be true of any system we choose, other than a wiki
you're already familiar with.  Afaict, none of those seemed to have the
kinds of features we wanted.

> Little seems to be done to prevent the problem of
> forgetting about them from happening again,

I don't understand this concern.  Making the content available in a
wiki-like format is specifically intended to make it more accessible, get
more people interested, and make it much less likely that it be forgotten
about.  The activity so far is initial evidence of success here.

> while the partly-solved problem of
> formatting is being solved afresh again.

The formatting of actual recipes is solved by the current solution. 
Overall structuring is something that would presumably also have had to be
dealt with using WebIt, in order to provide both a good online
presentation as well as other delivery formats.

Anton