Re: editing documents in a wiki

"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com> writes:
> > Step 1: install the firefox extension "It's All Text":
> > https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4125
> 
> Well, this actually does a fair bit, as long as problems with concurrent
> editing don't arise. 

Mediawiki seems to handle concurrent editing pretty well.  If two people
make localized changes to different parts of the page, both changes are
simply done.  If the changes are too close, the system tells the second
person to save that they have an edit conflict and makes them resolve
it.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Edit_conflict

> (And as long as the bug that appears to be showing
> up right now goes away.)

?

> > There are also command-line tools for wiki download/upload, but I
> > haven't tried them.
> > 
> > > then I'm casting a very firm vote against having our documents
> > > in the WIKI.   Note that the round-trip has to be able to produce
> > > wrapped lines for editing and then not produce diffs related to this
> > > wrapping, unwrapping, or re-wrapping, or any artifacts of the wrapping.
> > 
> > Is your concern here:
> >     - you don't want some tool messing up where you-as-editor
> >       put the line-ends?   The wiki shouldn't be a problem here.
> > or  
> >     - you want people to be able to see the changes for what they really
> >       are, not the changes in line-end placement caused by emacs flowing
> >       text?  The wiki diff tool sucks (IMHO), but there are external
> >       HTML diff tools we can use.
> 
> Well, this and more.  I want the wiki download mechanism to wrap long
> lines for me and not have line wrap changes show up in the diffs, but
> also have the line wraps in short line persist. (I could live without
> the last.)

I still don't really understand.  I wouldn't expect any tool to mess
with line breaks / wrapping.  The people editing the page just need to
agree on some conventions -- ie keep margins < 80 columns and re-fill
paragraphs as necessary, or don't use line-breaks inside a paragraph.

For myself, I prefer to keep margins < 80, and re-fill paragraphs as
necessary.   I guess I can live with people doing it the other way.

Within Wikipedia it looks like there is no consensus:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don%27t_use_line_breaks

... although that pages hasn't changed much in years.  Maybe some
consensus has emerged and is not expressed there.
  
     - Sandro

Received on Tuesday, 23 October 2007 04:58:52 UTC