Re: [Monotone-devel] wiki

[Markus Wanner]

Hello Thomas,

Thomas Moschny wrote:
> Beware - the nvm.web.ikiwiki branch has been merged back to nvm.web and
> suspended. Could you please propagate your last change(s) and suspend
> the branch again?

Richard did that for me, thanks again.

> This is explained in wiki/ikiwiki_migration.mdwn (rendered version here:
> http://monotone.ca/wiki/ikiwiki_migration/).

Thanks for the hint.

Can we please put some of that explanation in a README file within the
sources or something. It's frustrating not to be able to figure out.
Maybe "README.web"? (Not the migration part, but how to edit, preview,
etc..)

How is the webserver configured? What does one need to know when editing
files within the root directory of nvm.web? I.e., I don't see the
"README" itself linked from the main page. Can/should we explain the web
branch in "README" itself? Why is README and bb-howto.txt accessible,
but not wiki.mdwn? Shall I drop wiki/People/MarkusSchiltknecht, so it
does not appear under People/Developers (or People/Users) anymore? Or do
we have a "policy" to always keep URLs intact, that existed once?

I'd happily write such a quick README, but I'm not the person who knows...

> Well, the migration to ikiwiki has been started on the last summit. The
> wiki being part of our Monotone database seems to be a great advantage
> compared to the old system.

I absolutely agree to that, as far as the backend is concerned.

> Also, ikiwiki's way of rendering the page
> contents only once, when the source has been changed, sounds like a good
> idea to me.

Sure.

> Eventually we'll have a CGI-based mechanism for editing (and committing
> to) the wiki, if that's what you are missing. But before installing that
> that we need to be sure that we can prevent any spamming.

Yeah, I don't think editing via CGI is what's needed. Authentication and
user management would be at least annoying and duplicate.

I don't mind having to check out a branch and edit files there. That has
other advantages (like being able to grep and to use real editors). But
the common actions on a wiki, like editing and previewing modified pages
definitely need more explanation, because it's far form being obvious.

And as a visitors, I miss a search function. Something like "recent
changes" would also be nice. From a quick glance at ikiwiki.info, these
functions are available as a CGI, so I guess it's "just" a matter of
configuring and installing those, no?

Bottom line: I really appreciate the work to change to a monotone  based
backend. However, I'm now missing some pretty basic frontend functionality.

Regards

Markus Wanner