RE: Hosting of the cookbook

Noel Welsh wrote:
>   It's a tough call.  I agree TWiki has much useful
> functionality.  This could be added to Moshi, some of
> it fairly easily, but I'm not sure the effort in
> reinventing the wheel is worth it.  Hmmmm...I'm
> inclined to go with TWiki, as I don't think I'll get
> around to adding all the useful stuff to Moshi in the
> near future and it doesn't seem that anyone will do so
> either.  Any thoughts from others?

I should add that I don't have a problem installing some other wiki or
content-management software, as long as it's not incredibly complex to
maintain.  TWiki is the only wiki I'm familiar with that has revision
control - I'm sure there are others, but I don't know anything about them.
Clients of mine use Twiki and it works well.

> > I have no idea whether Twiki is appropriate for
> > collective book authoring,
>
> It seems appropriate enough.  The only problem I
> envisage (and the area where Moshi is nice) is
> formatting Scheme code.

The Twiki architecture is pretty open, and it supports plugins.  Lots of
them exist already:
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/PluginPackage

There are already some plugins which handle code formatting, like
BeautifierPlugin.  It's possible to run external code (like Scheme).  I
imagine it shouldn't be difficult to do something for Scheme code
formatting.  We may be able to reuse some of Moshi's code, and it should
also be possible to do some integration with WebIt!, if that makes sense.

> I vote going with the TWiki (and I think Cookbook is
> appropriate) unless someone pitches in to help with
> Moshi.

As a test, I've set up a Cookbook web at:
http://shizuku.appsolutions.com/twiki/bin/view/Cookbook/WebHome

If we're going to use this permanently, I'll set up a friendlier URL for it.

To pretty up the default Twiki interface, I've installed a skin called
VoidSkin and done some minor Schematics-specific customization.

For anyone who wants to try it out, to create & edit pages on the site, you
can register yourself at:
http://shizuku.appsolutions.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TWikiRegistration

Pick a wikiname (e.g. mine is AntonVanStraaten) to identify yourself.  Note
that the name needs mixed case internally to be recognized as a wikiname -
in particular, a name like, say, MJRay wouldn't work (sorry!) because the
capitals are all in the front.

If you've never used Twiki before, check out the following:
http://shizuku.appsolutions.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/WelcomeGuest
http://shizuku.appsolutions.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/TWikiTutorial
http://shizuku.appsolutions.com/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/WikiSyntax

Once you've registered, an important customization for usability purposes is
to change the size of the default text edit box which you're given when you
edit a page.  Go to the page for your own name, edit it, and change the text
box width and height to whatever you want.

If you're already familiar with Twiki, the VoidSkin gives it a somewhat
different feel.  It seems nice enough to me, but I'm open to any
suggestions.

> > Unfortunately I see that schematics.org and .net is
> > taken
>
> Yeah.  Its especially annoying as neither are used.
> schematics.org actually expires 23-May-2004 10:15:32
> UTC.  I don't know if its worth contacting the owner
> ([email protected]) to see if they'll consider not
> renewing it when it expires.  schemoids.{net, org,
> com} is still available :-/

If it's someone squatting and trying to sell the domain, I assume they won't
give it up for free.  Maybe it's better to wait and see whether it becomes
available?  I don't know what's best.

Anton



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