[Moin-user] The beginnings of a HowTo collection

[Rick Vanderveer]

Hey John,
The new HowTo section is the result of a offline conversation Thomas and I
had.  I noticed that the docs on master19 were shrinking, not growing.  I
wanted more of a Cookbook-style instructions, but Thomas had some really
valid & good reasons why this is a bad idea for the official docs-- citing,
among other things,

   - difficulty in maintaining;
   - abandoned, out-of-date platform-specific instructions;
   - and people not bothering to understand what they're doing-- resulting a
   lot of time spent on newbies how barely understand the concept of how a web
   server works, trying to get an install working.

The new docs are focused on "standalone", intended for everyone and small
work-groups; and "server" intended for a very specific administrator-type
audience.

Then, there's the new "HowTo" section (which was our idea of being a
cookbook where we can add our own recipes (You and I must think alike, I
even used the word "cookbook" when describing it).  I've already moved over
all the Windows-howto's that I've been maintaining.  I fully encourage you
to update/improve as you see fit.

Comments on your comments:

2. Features---
  I agree that Moin kinda under-sells itself.  At first glance doesn't looks
as feature-full as Twiki and others (however, I switched from Twiki to Moin,
which should tell you what I think of Twiki).  The features page, in my
opinion, should have more examples.  Also, new features sometimes don't make
it to the features page, like for example the
Admonitions<http://moinmo.in/HelpOnAdmonitions>
.

3. Comments/Discussion--
  I too was baffled by the word-choice of Supplementation.  I figured it was
just a choice to not copy Wikipedia.  Sorta like how every browser calls
bookmarks; bookmarks.  But Microsoft needed to differentiate and called
theirs "favorites".  :-)  I think Moin could benefit be renaming it to
'Discussion'.

4.  obsolete pages:
   I second that.  I'd love to aggressively go thru and delete all the
1.3-related stuff, for example.  It's frustrating when I'm searching Moin
and these antique pages come up.  I would do it if I weren't afraid of
getting banned.  :-)


-Rick



On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 11:22 AM, John_Nowlan <john_nowlan at carleton.ca>wrote:

> > http://moinmo.in/HowTo
>
> Should this be used for 'Cookbook/Recipes' and 'Tips'?
>
> I ask here because I am nervous about updating 'master' pages but will
> if it's agreed.
>
> Let me also say here that I'm impressed with the improvements being made
> to Moin. I just (finally) upgraded to Moin 1.8.1 under apache/mod_wsgi
> on windows and it performs better than expected!
>
> The improvements I'm talking about though are mostly to the
> documentation.
> It's been recognized as an area that needs work and each release it has
> gotten better imho.
>
> Thanks moin developers/contributors/users!
>
> Here are a few areas that still need work (and by saying this I am
> sayiing I will try and add/update docs - *gulp*, now I've done it,
> jumped into the fire/comitted to doing something) but may need help
> making sure I understand things.
>
> 1. usage
> I'm always amazed at the way Moin can solve problems, but the answers
> have come from this list, not the docs.
> Specifically (and I'm going from memory, summarizing list discussion,
> some of these which I need to try, now that I'm able):
> - Paste from Word (when editing in GUI mode) as a way to convert html or
> word pages to wiki pages. Wins my best tip vote!
> - recent changes master page that shows changes from designated
> interwikis, acting as a master/department changes page for
> detail/subdepartments
> - others, but I'll try and address that in an actual howto page..
>
> 2. features
> Moin often has the features, they just need to be discovered. This is
> unfortunate because others here at my work have been suggesting twiki,
> but I want to work in python :)
> The twiki front page is better from an eye candy perspective and
> highlighting its features than Moin. Maybe the features are more
> comprehensive? Twiki.net association/collaboration?
>
> 3. notes/comments/discussion page -
> There is this page http://moinmo.in/HelpOnLinking/NotesLinks, but I
> don't understand it.
> Is this like (inline) comments? http://moinmo.in/HelpOnComments
> Or http://moinmo.in/HelpOnConfiguration/SupplementationPage and why
> isn't this called 'DiscussionPage' since this appears to be a better
> name, follows 'Wikipedia' which makes it more familiar, easier to
> understand, imho. Seriously, why 'Supplementation'? (o.k. I am a bigoted
> native english speaker:)
>
> Perhaps all these features need to discussed on one enveloping  'HowTo'
> page.
>
> 4. out of date/obsolete stuff
> Universal to wiki's. Recognized.
>
> O.k., I've done enough complaining. Thanks for listening. Now maybe I
> can help...
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by:
> SourcForge Community
> SourceForge wants to tell your story.
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword
> _______________________________________________
> Moin-user mailing list
> Moin-user at lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/moin-user
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/moin-user/attachments/20090123/eaa99831/attachment.html>