irclog2html for #hhwiki on 20030725

00:58.16*** join/#hhwiki `Omega (Omega@h24-79-6-44.wp.shawcable.net)
00:58.43*** part/#hhwiki `Omega (Omega@h24-79-6-44.wp.shawcable.net)
13:27.54*** join/#hhwiki kencausey (ken@ken.mojodata.com)
13:49.47*** join/#hhwiki MrFluffy (~phil@dyn-212-47-230-182.ppp.tiscali.fr)
14:54.48*** part/#hhwiki MrFluffy (~phil@dyn-212-47-230-182.ppp.tiscali.fr)
15:02.01*** join/#hhwiki pb_ (pb@dhcp647.linuxsymposium.org)
15:13.49*** join/#hhwiki pb_ (pb@dhcp647.linuxsymposium.org)
16:36.46*** join/#hhwiki AntiProxy (Admin@AntiProxy.com)
16:57.23kencauseyAntiProxy: Hi
16:57.29kencauseyoops, netsplit
17:24.47*** join/#hhwiki pb_ (pb@dhcp894.linuxsymposium.org)
18:32.32kencauseypb_: Hmm, good idea, bad idea, I'm not sure.  Adding the ability to append comments to static pages?  AntiProxy?
18:33.00kencauseyMaybe we just eliminate the wiki altogether.
18:35.40pb_I think the wiki is valuable for more spontaneous stuff.
18:35.56kencauseyTrue
18:36.09pb_It's often very useful to have a place where you can put ad-hoc notes for whatever you happen to be working on at the time.
18:36.36kencauseyWhat's the fundamental thing that makes it useful though?
18:36.41kencauseyWeb based editting?
18:36.52kencauseyStructured Text?
18:36.55pb_Yeah.  I guess really it's having a kind of shared whiteboard that's valuable.#
18:37.12kencauseyThe question is could be replace the fundamental usefulness with something simpler and easier to manage.
18:37.16kencauseys/be/we/
18:37.54kencauseySince people don't seem to mind signing up for accounts on the geeklog site, maybe we could go to a system where you have to have a geeklog account to create pages.
18:38.05kencauseys/create/create\/edit/
18:38.10pb_Yes, I think that'd be worthwhile.
18:39.31kencauseyAs much as I love Zope, having all these disparate systems seem to complicate things.
18:44.10kencauseyI'm thinking people could add pages under their account (another menu item in User functions).  They would end up with a URL like http://handhelds.org/<uw>/<username>/<page title> for their page where <uw> is whatever the URL is for the geeklog plugin.  The page would not be linked to from anywhere except a directory that each user can see of his/her own pages.  If they want to they can give the URL to anyone or link to it from anywhere.  They can add it
18:44.10kencauseyto the Web Resources.  They can set each page to either be only edittable by the owner or edittable by any registered user (any admin can edit any page).
18:45.12kencauseySurely we can find some PHP structured text rendering code
18:46.03pb_Surely.  There might even be a php-based wiki implementation that we can borrow stuff from.  Wiki seems to have been implemented in almost every conceivable way at some time or another.
18:46.11kencauseyRight
18:47.33kencauseyManagement then of new pages could be eased by having a new line item under Admins Only that gives admins access to the newest created/modified pages for quick perusal.
18:48.39pb_Maybe it'd be worth bringing this up on the admin@ list for wider comments.
18:49.20kencauseyYeah, I want to give it a little more thought, but I'm glad you consider it worth considering.
18:49.37kencauseyI really would need to corral someone else like AntiProxy to at least help.
18:50.10pb_Yep.  I need to think about it some more myself.  On the one hand I agree that the current wiki is hard to tame, but I am worried that we might be setting the barrier to entry so high that we will kill off some of the worthwhile stuff as well.
18:50.43kencauseyYes, that's the major issue.  But I fear the wiki mangling is only going to increase over time.
18:51.39kencauseyAnd creating a geeklog account (having an email address) really doesn't seem like much of a barrier.  I think it's in everyone's interest to restrict page modifiction to those that are willing to put forth a little effort and be willing to identify themselves with the page.
18:51.45pb_Yep.  I think my favoured course at the moment would be to retain the basic idea of the wiki as we have it now (ie everybody can edit any page) but require you to be authenticated to geeklog before making any edits.
18:52.45kencauseyYes, the idea of restricting edits to the owner is only a minor issue.
18:53.52pb_I don't have much of an idea how to tie wiki edit rights into geeklog's user system though, at a technical level.  I guess geeklog must set a cookie on authenticated users, so we could maybe hack the wiki to require this.
18:54.10kencauseyHuh?
18:54.19kencauseyI don't see any reason to make use of the existing wiki at all
18:54.37kencauseyThere's whole gobs of functionality there that we have no use for.
18:54.47kencauseyJust do this as a new geeklog plugin
18:55.13pb_Mmm, yeah, maybe that's the thing to do.
18:55.31pb_Does a geeklog plugin exist for that kind of thing, or would we need to develop one?
18:55.44kencauseyNo idea, but I'm assuming for now that we would have to develop it.
18:55.49kencauseyBut it doesn't seem that involved to me.
18:56.15pb_No, indeed.  In fact, calling it a "plugin" is a bit of an over-glamorisation.  It's really just a piece of PHP that calls some functions provided by geeklog.
18:56.38kencauseyHistory can simply be done by having each "page" be a directory, as new versions are created a new file is added into the directory and when rendered simply the newest one is picked.
18:56.48kencauseyTrue
18:56.53pb_Yep, that'd work.
18:56.59kencauseyBut being able to hook into the menus would be good.
18:57.40kencauseyTo revert to a previous version simply make a new copy of the older version.
18:57.57pb_Right.  Or we could use RCS for that.
18:58.00kencauseyIt wouldn't be hard then to automate pruning.
18:58.13kencauseyyes, that would be more space efficient I suppose.
18:58.25pb_One feature I've often missed from the current wiki is "show me what changed in the last <n> versions of this page".
18:58.33kencauseydiff?
18:58.36pb_right.
18:58.51kencauseyhmm
18:58.57kencauseyWhat if pages were checked into CVS?
18:59.13pb_Yes, we could do that, but it probably doesn't buy much.
18:59.29kencauseyI suppose not.
18:59.43kencauseyCan you trim RCS files?
18:59.53pb_The only advantage of CVS over RCS is that multiple people can check the tree out and work on it.  I don't think we would want people hacking the content by hand, though I suppose there is no particular reason to forbid it.
19:00.06kencauseyRight, I just realized that.
19:00.27pb_Not sure about pruning.  But disk space is not an issue for us anyway.
19:08.30kencauseypb_: Is there a way to store other information (properties) with each RCS checkin?  And be able to quickly query it?  Like version date, a username for each version?
19:10.01*** topic/#hhwiki by kencausey -> HH Wiki cleanup. Janitors please apply. New HH.org site running GeekLog! http://handhelds.org/z/wiki/WikiReorganization Ken Causey gets heretical: http://handhelds.org/z/wiki/ReplaceThisWiki
19:10.16kencauseyI'm assuming the obsolete packages thing is old news.
19:12.00pb_kencausey: well, you get a "comment" field, which is effectively free-form text.  RCS versions are automatically dated.
19:12.24kencauseyAh, yeah, that should work.
19:13.21kencauseyHmm
19:13.30kencauseyDo we need to replicates WikWork functionality?
19:13.40pb_What's that?
19:13.44kencauseyerr
19:13.45kencauseysorry
19:13.47kencauseyWikiWord
19:13.48kencauseyWikiName
19:13.59kencauseyautomatic internal links
19:14.12pb_You mean how you type a WackyWikiWord and it automatically gets made into a link?
19:14.17kencauseyYes
19:14.21pb_No, I find that feature annoying.
19:14.43kencauseyDo we need anything like it, or is it sufficient to have users type full URLs?
19:15.03pb_I like the way you can write [word] and have that automatically become a link.
19:15.04kencauseyThere are other implementations, like swiki (smalltalk wiki) uses *this is a page*
19:15.13pb_Right, or that.
19:15.18kencauseyRight, I  mean the basic idea, not the way the link is written
19:15.50pb_Being able to easily link to other pages seems valuable, but having it automatically key on StudlyCaps is undesirable because you get too many false positives.
19:16.00pb_I want links to appear only where the author has explicitly asked for them.
19:16.13kencauseyI can agree with that
19:20.40kencauseyI assume you could eliminate the need to have scriptname.php as part of the URL by creating directory scriptname with index.php as the script?  If you use a URL http://hh.org/geeklog/scriptname/<blah>  will blah get passed as parameters?
19:21.14pb_I think we can make that happen, yes.
19:21.35pb_Might need a small amount of apache magic, but I'm sure it's doable.
19:50.34kencauseyWould each page be an RCS file?
19:52.58pb_Yes, I think so.
19:56.32kencauseyIf you get a minute look over http://handhelds.org/z/wiki/ReplaceThisWiki and see if I've covered everything.
20:10.49kencauseyBeing able to do something about code in pages would be nice.
20:11.22pb_Okay, I'll take a look soonest.
20:11.58kencauseyThanks, no rush
20:12.09kencauseyI'll not do anything about it until Monday probably.
20:30.01*** join/#hhwiki pb_ (pb@dhcp647.linuxsymposium.org)
22:56.31*** join/#hhwiki kencausey (~ken@12-222-170-136.client.insightBB.com)

Generated by irclog2html.pl by Jeff Waugh - find it at freshmeat.net! Modified by Tim Riker to work with blootbot logs, split per channel, etc.