templates unwieldy (1.8rc11)
JDGlanville
A quick note to pass along my experience with WikidPad and it's
template functionality. Some background: I've been using WikidPad for
about a week now as a "brain-dump" storage and have been generally
satisfied. I'm currently using 1.8rc11.
I have three issues to mention, two concerning templates, the other a
general, minor issue (more of a whine, really).
1) Needing to create articles based on templates though modification
of other pages.
OK. according to the help text, the way to create an article based on
a template is to modify an existing page (one that contains the text
"[template: ArticleTemplate]").
I have to modify an article to make an article? Yech!
Up until now, I've been using the "open article" (Ctrl-O) command to
create new articles, which I consider to be an excellent way to do
things. It allows me to search for an article before I make a new,
duplicate article. But, if I want to create an article based on a
template, I need to modify an existing article.
Basically, I can't create a 'parent-less' article based on a template.
2) Templates are only used if there is _one_ parent.
I decided to write a new article based on a template. So, as per the
documentation, I went to the article containing the [template:...]
property and added a wiki-word for my new article, "ANewArticle".
When I followed the link, the template wasn't used. This confused
me. I later found out why: I found an existing article already
contained the ANewArticle wiki word, but the article for this word
wasn't already created.
What I'm interpreting happened was this: when I tried to create the
ANewArticle article, WikidPad found that this article had two parents,
one containing the [template] property and the other not containing
the property. As there wasn't a _single_ parent, WikidPad failed to
use the template.
Is there a way to _explicitly_ create a template without having to
have a sequence of all lined up just right (like having to have
Jupiter in Mars, on a full moon, and only on Tuesdays when my blood
sugar is high)?
3) [whine: on] I know it's generally hard to do, but I'd love to see
some adoption of a standard wiki syntax. For example, MediaWiki and
DokuWiki use equals (=) to denote headers and double square brackets
([[ and ]]) to denote wiki links, while WikidPad uses it's own
notation. I use many different wikis in the course of a day, and I'm
constantly making wiki-syntax mistakes (using wiki A's syntax in B).
I'd love to see some adoption of an accepted standard. [whine: off]
One other thing I dislike: how easy it is to misinterpret text.
Please interpret the above as an attempt to provide feedback to better
the product, and not just another crack-pot troll trying to piss
people off.
Thanks for WikidPad so far. After my week of use, I feel that it will
be of great use to me.
JDG
Michael Butscher
WikidPad has no way to tell which parent is right if there are two or more.
> Is there a way to _explicitly_ create a template without having to
> have a sequence of all lined up just right (like having to have
> Jupiter in Mars, on a full moon, and only on Tuesdays when my blood
> sugar is high)?
Currently this is not possible because I thought most people wanted it
the way it works now. But maybe you could take a look at text blocks
which allow to insert some text into a page, but creating a larger text
block with many lines isn't really convenient.
I think both problems could be solved by some menu entry which offers a
list of possible template pages for a newly created page. If one is
chosen, its content overwrites the newly created page (according to the
template rules, especially handling of the heading).
The only problem is that the list of template pages should probably not
contain all pages in the wiki, but only those designated to be a
template, but how to tell?
One possibility is to list only pages which appear as value of a
template attribute, but this may not be what you want.
> 3) [whine: on] I know it's generally hard to do, but I'd love to see
> some adoption of a standard wiki syntax. For example, MediaWiki and
> DokuWiki use equals (=) to denote headers and double square brackets
> ([[ and ]]) to denote wiki links, while WikidPad uses it's own
> notation. I use many different wikis in the course of a day, and I'm
> constantly making wiki-syntax mistakes (using wiki A's syntax in B).
> I'd love to see some adoption of an accepted standard. [whine: off]
The first problem is that (as far as I know) we don't have an accepted
standard.
MediaWiki is of course widely used, but the Trac project management
system and its wiki component (also used for WikidPad) is too.
In the Yahoo group, somebody presented a way to partly resemble
MediaWiki syntax (regarding the headings):
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/wikidPad/message/3864
For the newest 1.9beta there may be further tweaking of this needed.
> One other thing I dislike: how easy it is to misinterpret text.
> Please interpret the above as an attempt to provide feedback to better
> the product, and not just another crack-pot troll trying to piss
> people off.
No problem.
Michael