Dan Rue wrote: >On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 07:02:44AM -0600, Bob Hartmann wrote: > > >> You're right, Dan. I really ought to stop recommending TWiki. >> <nop>_It was_ <nop>*by far* the best thing alive when I put it up 4 >> years ago at a former employer. I did the ugly task of forcing people >> to use BumpyWords. (tsk,tsk, I'm editing your doc! do it right!) >> Hindsight, I think it caught on because I wrote 90% of everything for >> 2 years and my techs could search for and maybe even *find* useful >> info instead of phkng calling me all day. >> TWiki for me was simply a great way to write quick stuff quickly and >> to publish more format-intensive stuff consistently. then there's, >> mm, LDAP Plugin. Search the dreckry from yer browser? The TWiki core >> developers are very consistent and conservative. Good for them, I >> think, but wikked little tools (perl tools) like that one make me >> wanna take these guys seriously. >> I still don't know why perl is a strike against, tho, or how TWiki is >> any more difficult to install and configure than any mySQL/PHP thing. >> I can put up a TWiki in about 20 minutes.. Mm, now I should go back >> and read my first paragraph again. And get proficient at mySQL and >> PHP. >> perl is probably the worst language ever written.. and the most >> useful. I can't find the quote! >> >> > >Lol.. ok, > > > >> I still don't know why perl is a strike against, tho, ... >> >> >2 lines later.. > > >> perl is probably the worst language ever written.. >> >> > >hehe.. > >Getting the site set up isn't too terribly bad, after you deal with cpan >and 3rd party perl deps.. The worst part is once you get it set up, >figuring out the namespace scope stuff. Took me a while to wrap my head >around their namespaces (and by that I mean Main, TWiki, Sandbox, and >then the ones that you can create). Great, so once I figure them out, >they're kind of a neat way to separate your data. But then as soon as >an unsuspecting user tries to link to an article in the Administration >web from the Development web, it doesn't work and I get a call.. Now >I'm stuck explaining namespaces to some luser. Modern wiki's are much >more friendly in this respect (plus php/mysql apps really are much >easier to install than perl apps), and I don't find that it's really a >problem having only one namespace. Heck, the biggest wiki in the world >(wikipedia) only has one namespace, and they don't seem to mind. > >Dan > > > Dan, I appreciate the conversation. I know, I know. Maybe I've been too lucky, but I've never had to do anything with perl and CPAN in putting one of these up on RH8, SuSE 9.x, debian or even KNOPPIX. I've stuck to Apache 1.3 and perl 5.8. Who needs a spurious performance bump when it'll likely give you a concussion or brain freeze? (from that statement, pretty clear that I have tried and failed with Apache2 and mod_perl.) To the question of separate TWikiWebs (namespaces)-- It was a matter of security, privacy and separated authority instead of data organization. I built that TWiki for myself and my immediate customers, the desktop techs. I wanted to make doc available to them from the EU's PC. Searchable, printable from anywhere. But I didn't want the EUs to be browsing our stuff. TWiki's authentication scheme was the only way to go at the time. Once it caught on, other functional groups in IT wanted some, but they didn't want the desktop slugs to see their stuff. fine. This is where TWiki's model of webs and groups becomes useful. I wanted concise, verifiable and accountable documentation, not in the hands of an all knowing me, but put in the hands of people who use it more. Power to the People so they stop bugging me. :-) Then I scoured their edits and sent nasty-grams. It's good to be the king. =-O HappyNewYear. bhartm