[moin-user] Moin 2 raw text?

[Paul Boddie]

On Friday, 8 October 2021 23:44:28 CEST Roger Haase via moin-user wrote:
>  There are several name changes, "Raw" is now "Highlight" (or "</>" on tiny
> displays), "Edit" is now "Modify"... Cut and paste still works.

Surely the closest equivalent to the raw action is the "Download" link, 
although that forces a download as opposed to letting the browser display the 
page content as plain text.

> There is not a button link to hide the banner.

I guess that theming could probably introduce such flexibility, though.

Previously...

On Thursday, October 7, 2021, 07:34:30 PM MST, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-
ic.com> wrote:
>
> Unfamiliar interface ... "different" or "inferior?".
> 10 minutes of frobbing did not reveal the equivalent of Moin 1.9:
> 
> More Actions:
>   Raw Text
> 
> I hope to learn what is typed in, to make what comes out.  I'll git the
> github version, and frob some more.

I have always found Moin 2 to be rather unfamiliar despite the familiar 
general styling. Some kind of Moin 1.9 theme with familiar navigation elements 
would be helpful, perhaps.

> One really important advantage (for me) of Moin 1.9 is that I can compose
> raw text with other tools - building raw text for tables with C programs,
> for example, then cut and paste.  Will Moin 2 permit that?

I imagine that editing still provides an opportunity for the pasting of raw 
text from other sources, but when I was still using Moin 1.9 and updating the 
pages separately, I was using Moin's import mechanism which was a bit 
cumbersome. I don't know whether Moin 2 reproduces that closely or has 
something else.

> Slightly disturbing is that the banner area is a little taller.  As
> screens get wider and wider (and simultaneously runty-er and runty-er),
> tall banners are a step backwards.  OTOH, if the whole banner can be
> collapsed with a not-yet-discovered button click, I can learn to love it.

Like with Moin 1.9, if theming is extensive enough then it should be possible 
to have something closer to what you are used to.

> Anyway, if there's a vote for converting Moin1.9 to Python 3, or
> releasing Moin2 *AS THAT DEMO SEEMS TO BEHAVE NOW* as "Stable" and
> going with that ...  I'm in the Moin1.9 migration camp.  FORK BACK!
> 
> Not sure what I can contribute to converting Moin1.9, besides testing
> beta code and making revealing mistakes and documenting what I did to
> make them (I have daily backups, I won't lose my work).  But then,
> I can't make hello.c compile the same way twice running, so if the
> retrograde renegade team needs a crash test dummy, I'm your dummy.

I think you (and maybe quite a few others) probably need to see a theme closer 
to Moin 1.9, a good mechanism for displaying raw text (probably using an 
action for that purpose if it doesn't exist already), another good mechanism 
for importing pages, and it would also be nice to have a decent mechanism for 
exporting wikis as static pages, which is something "moin export dump" rather 
failed to do adequately, in my opinion.

I also think that the deployment situation needs to be a lot better. Relying 
on Python packaging tools to work is not really sustainable. After getting 
myself into a mess with them the other evening, I then encountered them doing 
absurd things during my work day on Friday, which turned out to be some 
special Debian customisations to supposedly prevent users from doing "bad 
things", as if there were any further need to compound the general frustration 
involved in using them.

Of course, if Moin 2 were to be packaged for Debian, the various dependencies 
would also be packaged, but this is tedious work (technically and socially) 
that would need to be encouraged, supported and have people within the Debian 
scene committed to a successful outcome. This in contrast to the way that 
Python 2 was thrown overboard.

(And yes, I know that the Python core developers don't support Python 2 any 
more: I wrote probably several blog posts about such matters quite some time 
ago, maybe even mentioning how the core developers were actively frustrating 
and sabotaging people's attempts to maintain Python 2 independently, notably 
forbidding them from using the Python name. Parroting the rhetoric of those 
core developers and going along with various juvenile coercion techniques like 
the "Python clock" was not the respectful approach one might have expected 
from a Free Software distribution.)

> As far as difficult discussions with my boss, my wife lets me think
> that's me ... until I make a mistake, as defined by her.  She won't
> take kindly to rewriting her wiki content and learning a different
> computer tool, so I would rather kick in some money to the Moin1.9
> migration, instead of paying a divorce attorney and moving to a
> fleabag hotel.

By those criteria, an investment in Moin might be a good investment, but I 
would like to hear those closer to Moin core development suggest how existing 
Moin users might migrate, perhaps based on their own experiences. I hope that 
the demo site isn't the only Moin 2 site out there.

Paul