[pmwiki-users] Feature request: Action lists in skins

[Neil Herber]

At 2005-04-07  11:58 AM -0500, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
> > It's just that I'm at an 80% solution right now, with bits and pieces
> > hanging around. I get ample feedback on those missing 20%, but I haven't
> > gotten anything about the 80% part - yet I need the latter to do the 20%.
> > What frustrates me isn't that nobody seems to agree with it instantly.
> > The situation is that I'm exploring a quite lonely part of design space,
> > and instead of helping me find a way to better places from where I am,
> > everybody insists on restarting from someplace entirely different.
> > That's frustrating for me and ineffective for both sides of the exchange.
>
>No, don't feel persecuted here.  The situation is much more likely:
>    - the vast majority of people on the list have trouble following what
>      we're discussing

You can add my name to the vast majority who have trouble following this 
proposal.  ;-)

When I first started using PmWiki, I had never used any PHP and my HTML 
experience was limited to whatever Dreamweaver or Golive could provide to 
me with a nice interface. (Forget CSS!!) Adjusting the entries on 
config.php was very similar (to me) to filling out a form. Do you want to 
allow uploads? Enter 1 for yes, 0 for no, and so on.

I found the default PmWiki skin too ugly for my purposes, so I reluctantly 
started trying other skins. My first choice was Beeblebrox-Gila, but at the 
time, it did not render properly on IE (since corrected). Trying to edit 
the action lists was beyond me, so I just took what I was given (with 
thanks, by the way).

Then I came across Gemini Two which allowed me to specify my own set of 
actions in whatever order I chose, and they were both highly desirable 
traits. I did not have to look at the sticky entrails of CSS, I just had to 
populate a list on a PmWiki page. The biggest advantage being that I could 
modify the menus with any browser from anywhere. I did not have to be able 
to FTP a new CSS file to some remote server. This is not an insignificant 
point to me.

Unfortunately, I *thought* I understood some of the things that Jo was 
proposing, and I appear to have "hijacked" ( or "sidetracked", I forget the 
exact term used) this thread for a while by proposing things like TopBar, 
BottomBar etc. But as I said later, all I want is an easy way to control 
the look of the pages and the placement of items in the menu/action lists 
without having to crack open .css or .tmpl files.

Note that once I had a stable version of the page appearance and menu 
items, I more or less ignored these things. So having a method that lets me 
make changes infrequently, without having to relearn great chunks of PmWiki 
internals is a huge bonus.


Neil

Neil Herber
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