Re: [Phpwiki-talk] Wikilens ?

[Dan F. <dfr...@cs...>]

Arnaud Fontaine wrote:

> Hi all and Happy new year !
>
> A short message to ask Reini and Dan about wikilens category 
> integration ? Soon to be released ? Any help needed ?


Arnaud,

Thanks for your interest! First a note on WikiLens progress, then 
description of integration with PhpWiki. The short story is: we are 
progressing well on WikiLens; I'd like to merge with Phpwiki, but some 
things make it hard for me; any help is appreciated.

*** WikiLens progress

"WindWhale" (1.3.9.GL4) was released in late Sept 2004. Its main 
features were: stability and bugfixes; a login process that actually 
worked. This is what is currently on the site (always available in full 
source at http://www.wikilens.org/wikilens-src.tgz; see also 
http://wikilens.org/wiki.php/WikiLens).

We have been furiously working on our next WikiLens release, 
"MoonBadger" (1.3.9.GL5). I have tagged release candidate 1 (RC1), so it 
should be released within a week. New features include:

- Ratemania (the ability to put ratings widgets anywhere, not 
necessarily tied to pages)

- Take most of the data we use out of page text (because our users were 
accidentally deleting it and uncomfortable editing it), and put it in 
meta-data with specialized editors. This includes category membership 
and buddies.

- Better buddy support and visibility (easily add/delete buddies through 
"manage buddies" or by adding buddies-of-buddies; buddies page ratings 
show up at the top of every page; buddies who like an item show up in a 
column on category page; etc.)

- More "list" support (show on every page any lists that page is on; 
allow a user to add pages to a list either from the page, or from the 
list editor each with an autocomplete textbox)

- Improved pagelist look and feel (odd and even row highlighting, 
spacing, no indenting, etc.).

- Better category page sorting (case insensitive, bugfixing)

- A considerably faster ratings widget (all one piece with an image-map, 
client-side rendered, instead of 11 separate pieces server-side 
rendered), leading to a 6X reduction in category page size, and 
noticeably faster page loading.

- and more!

*** Merging with PhpWiki

Now, my thoughts on integration. First, I'd love for all of it to be 
integrated into Phpwiki! This would give us wider distribution, and 
Phpwiki more features and much-deserved credit. However, there are 
several barriers for me:

1. My plan is to only integrate with actual releases of PhpWiki, because 
those presumably are especially stable points. We are based on 1.3.9. 
1.3.10 has well-known bugs that make us not wish to integrate. 1.3.11 
has not been released for 9 months, and looks to still be adding 
features (not the sign of a release). This makes me sad. I think 
projects should 'release early and often.' Every 3 months, 4 at most. 
Anyway, when it comes out, we will examine doing what I call a 
"double-merge": first merging 1.3.11 into our stuff, then trying to 
contribute back as much as we can. It has been so long (probably about a 
year) that I fear this double merge will be hard, but I still want to 
try it.

2. There are some small things that Reini has refused to accept. 
Examples include: PageList::addColumnObject(), Smarty pre-processing of 
page templates. My guess is MoonBadger may bring more such features. I 
do not disapprove; this is his perogative, and he has to make the best 
decisions for Phpwiki. However, each presents a small puzzle to me for 
how to preserve our functioning system within those parameters.

3. There are also some disagreements we have on project style. For 
example, I believe Phpwiki should focus on very few back-ends. This 
would allow more time to make those back-ends work really well, and to 
do other features. I still see a lot of time dumped into Phpwiki 
back-end maintenance, which seems like 'opportunity cost' and makes me 
sad. WikiLens supports only the MySQL back-end.

Frankly, due to 1-3 above, the other developers on WikiLens have no 
desire to merge with PhpWiki. They want to fork. Unfortunately, this 
leaves me with less time and moral support to do the merging. When I 
say, "Take a look at how Phpwiki current CVS does that" they roll their 
eyes. Sometimes they look, sometimes not. When they don't look, our code 
diverges more.

I think Reini is a lot faster at merging that I am. The last time he 
estimated a day to merge WindWhale into Phpwiki. It would probably take 
me at least a week, with my other work duties. MoonBadger (when it comes 
out) will be even farther, hence take even longer.

Also, the last time Reini merged our code in, he both changed it and 
broke it. Again, changing it is his perogative, but makes my developers 
want to fork. Breaking it is of course unfortunate, and I'm sure he 
didn't mean it, but costs us more time and makes the case for merging 
harder.

What I am saying is I see all these factors pushing us towards forking, 
even though I wish it weren't so. Things that would help us not fork:

- Frequent stable releases of Phpwiki. Once every 3 months, 4 at MOST. 
Many people want this, I think.
- Fewer disagreements about project and code style
- A place where we could add our extensions without them being changed much

Anyway, I eagerly wait the release of 1.3.11. Once we release 
MoonBadger, I also would eagerly appreciate help in merging its features 
into Phpwiki.

I hope that helps.

Dan