Mailing List Archive: 49091 messages
  • Home
  • Script library
  • AltME Archive
  • Mailing list
  • Articles Index
  • Site search
 

Some thoughts

 [1/6] from: g::santilli::tiscalinet::it at: 24-Aug-2002 14:27


Hello all, Inspired by Joel's idea of having a wiki as a personal notebook, yesterday I was having a look at Vanilla. (Hey, that's really great --- I think I should have had a look at wikis before... :) So, I'm now thinking of how cool would it be to make Vanilla talk to MySQL, add some generic form generators (I have something like that in PHP), and being able to build completely dynamic web sites in a few moments... I see lots of opportunities here. BTW, Andrew, is the code for your wiki in your Values.r? I think Vanilla would really benefit from having eText built-in, but maybe your wiki is already doing everything that Vanilla does so there's no need to reinvent the wheel. :) Now, if I merge my Road project with a MySQL-based Vanilla, and make them able to generate both VID and HTML code... (Oh well, just dreaming... :) What do you think? Who will ever need more to build an application? ;-) Regards, Gabriele. -- Gabriele Santilli <[g--santilli--tiscalinet--it]> -- REBOL Programmer Amigan -- AGI L'Aquila -- REB: http://web.tiscali.it/rebol/index.r

 [2/6] from: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 24-Aug-2002 16:19


Gabriele Santilli wrote:
>Hello all, > Inspired by Joel's idea of having a wiki as a personal
<<quoted lines omitted: 13>>
>just dreaming... :) What do you think? Who will ever need more to >build an application? ;-)
Well, maybe a time to get into Wiki too. Is it anything like IOS? If not - why is it important? :-) Does it enable cooperation? How difficult is it to set-up, etc. etc. I am watching Wiki related messages here and there, look at some Wike sites, but it appeared to me as some chat/message board. Is there any relatively short (less than 10 pages :-) introduction to what is Wiki good for? Thanks, -pekr-

 [3/6] from: al:bri:xtra at: 25-Aug-2002 7:52


Gabriele wrote:
> BTW, Andrew, is the code for your wiki in your Values.r?
Not yet. It's a separate part. eText is included in Values.r. I'll send the very latest version to you directly by email.
> I think Vanilla would really benefit from having eText built-in, but maybe
your wiki is already doing everything that Vanilla does so there's no need to reinvent the wheel. :) One thing that my Wiki does well, is being able to have subdirectories and a flat address space (it searches every directory for the requested name. My Wiki also allows spaces and single word name with out the problems of CamelCaseWords. It's also easy for non-technical people to use as the link work matches what they see in the browser URL.
> Now, if I merge my Road project with a MySQL-based Vanilla, and make
them able to generate both VID and HTML code... (Oh well, just dreaming... :) What do you think? Who will ever need more to build an application? ;-) I want to use NakedObjects! Andrew Martin ICQ: 26227169 http://valley.150m.com/

 [4/6] from: joel:neely:fedex at: 24-Aug-2002 20:37


Hi, Petr, Petr Krenzelok wrote:
> Gabriele Santilli wrote: > >Hello all,
<<quoted lines omitted: 5>>
> Well, maybe a time to get into Wiki too. Is it anything like > IOS?
Not AFAICT.
> If not - why is it important? :-) Does it enable cooperation? >
That's the whole idea!
> How difficult is it to set-up, etc. etc. >
Very little effort. The last one I wrote used one main cgi script (with a couple of stand-alone helpers that actually could have been additional functions inside the main script), an html page for the front door, another html page which is used as a template for generated pages, and a .css file for ease of managing style issues.
> ...it appeared to me as some chat/message board. >
It can certainly be used in that fashion, but that's like saying that telephones are a device to allow teen-aged girls to giggle about their favorite pop stars.
> Is there any relatively short (less than 10 pages :-) > introduction to what is Wiki good for? >
Think collaborative, web-based scrapbook. Then think how you could use such a tool. I've used mine as a workspace for ideas on articles to write or in progress, and as a scratchpad to collect useful URLs (sort of a personal blog). The ones I've installed at work have been used for: - agendas for upcoming meetings - minutes of past meetings - maintenance of both of the above using a laptop during the meeting itself - tracking bug reports - to-do lists for small-scale project management - setting up check-lists for installation of production software - keeping an up-to-date on-call schedule - logging trouble reports received by an on-call staff member - tracking requests for user accounts Below are some notes from the latest one I've written (known internally as the "eXtremeWeb"): 8<-------- What's the point? The eXtremeWeb is a minimalist implementation of a wiki web site. The word "wiki" comes from Hawaiian, and means "quick". The goal of a wiki site is to provide a flexible, living, participatory communication channel to a community of users. * LIKE any other web site, a wiki site is made up of HTML pages which can contain links among themselves or to other off-site web content. * UNLIKE other approaches to site construction, a wiki site requires no tool but a browser, and eliminates the need for HTML skills. As is common with wiki sites, the eXtremeWeb takes the notion of collaboration to the extreme; any member of the community can create new pages (called "topics") and edit any topic that already exists. The key principles are: Do The Right Thing We're all grownups who respect each others' work and contributions. Do The Simplest Thing That Works A collaborative community can establish conventions/agreements, either permanently or on a try-out basis, for their work together without enforcing those conventions by an inflexible mechanism. We Are A Work In Process By keeping the mechanisms as simple as possible, it's easy to try (and change) approaches within the community. But the simple foundation of the engine can be extended with specific new features when it becomes clear to the community that they're worth having. ... 8<-------- That last sentence describes a situation that has happened more than once; it becomes clear that a new feature would be useful based on prior experience with a more minimalist tool. Since the engine itself is only a few pages of code, it's often easy to extend it to have a new capability when such becomes appropriate. -- ; Joel Neely joeldotneelyatfedexdotcom REBOL [] do [ do func [s] [ foreach [a b] s [prin b] ] sort/skip do function [s] [t] [ t: "" foreach [a b] s [repend t [b a]] t ] { | e s m!zauafBpcvekexEohthjJakwLrngohOqrlryRnsctdtiub} 2 ]

 [5/6] from: g:santilli:tiscalinet:it at: 25-Aug-2002 14:53


Hi Petr, On Saturday, August 24, 2002, 4:19:01 PM, you wrote: PK> Is it anything like IOS? Well, yes and no. Yes, because you can do most of the basic things that you get with IOS with a wiki too. No, because an HTML page is in no way close to the power of a reblet. :-) PK> If not PK> - why is it important? :-) Because you can't hope to conquer the world in one step. ;-) (Also, the main point I was making is the opportunities we get in rapid application development, and easy and rapid application maintenance. Instead of programming, you describe: the whole point of REBOL probably.) PK> Does it enable cooperation? It does, in the same way the web does. IOS's surely much better in this regard, but it also depends on what you're doing. PK> How difficult is PK> it to set-up, etc. etc. Just a couple minutes for me, on Linux with Apache. PK> Is there any relatively short (less than 10 pages PK> :-) introduction to what is Wiki good for? It's a dynamic hypertext. It's that short enough? ;-) (Basically you let visitors add or modify the nodes of the hypertext, as well as add or modify links between nodes; Vanilla also allows to decide who is able to modify what, and tells you who has modified what, and other nice things...) Regards, Gabriele. -- Gabriele Santilli <[g--santilli--tiscalinet--it]> -- REBOL Programmer Amigan -- AGI L'Aquila -- REB: http://web.tiscali.it/rebol/index.r

 [6/6] from: jjmmes:yaho:o:es at: 25-Aug-2002 18:36


I am interested in your RAD/Road project. The app I want to build or help build (given I'm starting to use view now) is described below. I also have some random ideas on how the community of rebol developers could improve personal productivity or attack new projects. APP IDEA: The basic idea is to have a View jabber-like client that facilitates posting small descriptions of projects/technologies we are interested in or current scripts we are working on and sharing this info. Most communication would be offline (although online would be enabled too). The important point is that this is not related to the IOS collaboration platform or substitute for the mailing list. This is similar to the agents idea posted by Gabrielle a while back. The basic exchange example is: ;====================================================== Developer-id: "xyz" Now: [ Core CGI ] "working on search scripts" Short-Term: [ View ] "interested in RAD HTML development" [ Command Linux ] "working on Berkeley DB 4.0 interface" Medium-Term: [ View ] "interested in GIS applications" Long-Term: [] "" ;===================================================== This would only require someone volunteering a server to run the CGI scripts to store and retrieve the developer profiles and then locally on the clients we could look for projects that have synergies with our projects Feedback welcome !

Notes
  • Quoted lines have been omitted from some messages.
    View the message alone to see the lines that have been omitted