Community help wikis per release

[Phil Bull]

Hi Adam,

Great work! This would go a long way to getting the wiki properly
cleaned-up.

On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 11:55 -0400, Adam Sommer wrote:
> Currently the Macro will actually take any string you pass as an
> argument, and list it in the Versions table.  I did think about coding
> up something similar to what you suggest, but I couldn't decide on
> what the argument string should be.  

Ideally, the macro should perform some sort of validity check to make
sure that the arguments being passed to it are version numbers or
codenames. Otherwise, people might be tempted to start passing HTML and
CSS arguments, which could have adverse effects on the page
style/structure.

> Do you think passing the release number is the best way to go?  When I
> think about a Ubuntu release I usually think of it in terms of the
> first part of the codename Gutsy, Feisty, Edgy, etc.  So that turns
> the Macro usage into: 
> 
> [[ReleaseVersion(Gutsy, Feisty)]]
> 
> The release string would then be expanded into "Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy
> Gibbon), Ubuntu 7.06 (Feisty Fawn)".  Coding that won't be a problem,
> but if you want to use the release numbers just let me know.  We could
> always code for both ways, but it would probably be easier for the
> user to only allow one way to access the macro. 

I think that the best way of denoting versions in the macro argument
would be by using codenames (gutsy, feisty, etc.) as they are the most
common method of referring to releases. However, if the macro has to
look up version numbers corresponding to codenames, the list of versions
would have to be updated every release. This adds a small maintenance
burden which might turn out to be a bit of a hassle - I might be wrong,
but I think that MoinMoin needs to be restarted to recognise new/changed
macros. Also, people are prone to misspelling the release codenames -
fiesty, gusty and dappy, for example...

If we didn't use the codename in the release string itself, however,
we'd run the risk of users getting confused between versions.

> Also, I developed the Macro on MoinMoin 1.5.7, but it should probably
> work with older versions.

Thanks,

Phil

-- 
Phil Bull
http://www.launchpad.net/people/philbull