Re: [Phpwiki-talk] back again

[Steve W. <sw...@wc...>]

On Thu, 3 Aug 2000, Arno Hollosi wrote:

> I'm back from my vacation.

Rested or exhausted? ;-)


> Jeff's "takeover":  :)
> Overall I agree with Steve: I've no problem with someone contributing
> much more than me or replacing my code and going into a new direction.
> Although I'm not too happy about the 100% OOP approach I think I can
> live with it once I am familiar with the code. Call me old-fashioned
> but I find OOP harder to understand than conventional code.
> I had only a brief look at the code so far. Very good work, Jeff.

It is excellent work... and you're not alone when you say OOP designs are
harder to understand. They are. Even great OOP designs; I think Netscape's
approach to the DOM via Javascript is pretty good, but it takes a long
time to understand. Perl's CGI.pm was a bad one circa 1996, but I haven't
used it since. All of the OOP code I saw at the New York Times on the Web
was pretty bad. I think procedural design can be more obvious and
intuitive, but don't get me wrong, OOP has long term benefits. LambdaMOO
programming also benefits from a really good design.

When I think about PhpWiki's "usability" I think of it in three terms: 
* How easy is it to install and start using? (admin usability)
* How easy is it to use the browser interface and navigate/add/edit? (user
usability)
* And, how easy is it to understand the program design and modify it?
(hacker usability)

> Tables, and all that fancy stuff: I don't care if this code is
> included or not, but I want an easy option to turn that fancy stuff
> off (or have it off by default). I think recreating HTML is no
> good. It's part of WikiNature to have an easy markup, which newbies
> can understand and use without reading any docs. If you want the
> HTML-like features then use HTML.

Agreed. We'll add tables I suppose. Simple tables. I vow that we will
never do nested tables; they can enable HTML in the Wiki if they want
that. 

As long as users can: write paragraphs and LinkToPages they have 90%
of what they need, and everything else in the markup language is mostly
fluff.

> Inline images:
> Please leave the markup simple. I opt for
> [http://host/inline.jpg] and http://host/as_link.jpg.
> I think it's a clear, nice, and above all easy solution.
> And no, I don't think the inconsistency with
> [http://host/is_a_link.html] hurts. ALT tag? How about just giving
> one generic ALT tag to all images? Otherwise allow HTML (see above).

Agreed. Images are a low priority, and they can enable HTML if they want.
 
> References:
> Well, I guess you know my opinion on these. I see them as burden.
> Maybe an option in wiki_config to turn them off?

Once I've hacked in [http://inlined.png] and http://linked.png, we can
either abandon them or ignore them. We'll drop them in 2.0.

> Admin as WikiPages:
> Good idea.

Yes, it's so simple and perfect I can't believe I didn't think of it!

> If I interpret the situation right, then we will abandon 1.1.7 and
> switch to Jeff's code instead, right? If that is so, is 1.1.7 in a
> state that is suitable to be left as is? Maybe someone else wants
> to take this as a base instead of Jeff's code. If we need to do some
> cleanup, then we should do it now.

We will not abandon 1.1.7 (to be 1.2). I want to finish it up and the list
of things to do is not very long. Jeff, would it be hard to hack the
admin design you came up with into the 1.1.7 tree?

I think Jeff's work may form the basis of 2.0... I want to discuss a few
coding guidelines soon, because the "code usability" is important to the
hackers out there so they can understand/extend/hack PhpWiki.

sw

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