Purpose: a place to list weird side effects, surprises, and ... gripes, with regards to the '''concept''' of Wiki Wiki webs, or [Wiki] in short. Related pages: [Comments on the Tcl'ers Wiki], [Suggestions for Wikit], and [WiKit Problems]. ---- JC: ''Some of the comments below ought to be moved to the above (new) ones, I think'' The concept of [Wiki] is fascinating. Here's a list of thing which may need some improvement, please feel free to add notes: * URL recognition is tricky, "(URL)" links to "URL)", for example. * Bold and italic can be used only once on each line of text (wrapped lines count as one). There's no good excuse for this, it's just a bit trickier to implement. * It's yet another formatting convention (albeit a very simple one) - the basic requirement being that it must display well as HTML, and on Tk. A secondary goal is to make it reasonably obvious and readable as plain text. AK: I would like to embed image references and have the converter recognize them, showing the image instead of a simple link. AK: I could have added this to [Comments on the Tcl'ers Wiki], but my solution is more a general Wiki thing, so I did it here instead. I found no links to Gripes, Suggestions and Comments pages other than in the ChangeLog itself. It might be nice to have some sort of overview page containing references to all pages in the Wiki Web (Sitemap). AK: Ok, I found the main references to the pages mentioned above, in [Jean-Claude Wippler]s page, but I think it illustrates a general problem. A Wiki usually grows in unpredecented ways, and very unstructured, thus easily causing the "lost in (hyper)space" syndrome: Where am I, where were I, how do I find X. I believe that at least one (trusted) user, in case of complex Wiki's some more, should try to "moderate" an area. Hm. ... I am not thinking of moderation in the sense of "pre-edit approval", it is more like gardening. First a spurt(?) of growth, then the moderator/gardener starts weeding (removing OT-post), structures the contents into something more coherent, afterward the next cycle of growth and weeding begins. These phases may overlap, of course. JC: Does the new search capability compensate for the lack of a site map? 1999 Mar 9, AK: I thought to say "yes", but then I noticed that the search facility cuts the returned result at 50 entries, just like the recent page. So I have to say "Not quite". A sitemap tells us what we have, in a clear manner. Using a search facility however is more like being blind and probing, we don't know about the possible contents of the site, what we can search for. ---- 1999 Mar 9 ---- DGP: What I miss most is a Table of Contents/Index/Site Map. Since [The Tcl'ers Wiki] is promoted as the entry point, there ought to be available on that page, or on a page linked by that page, some way to find all the pages there are. I thought the [New Pages] page might be it, but it seems not. I first entered the Wiki on [package management], following AK's link in c.l.t. I don't think I could have ever found that starting from [The Tcl'ers Wiki]. '''1999 Mar 9, AK''', Remark: My link in c.l.t. used a feature of this wiki, the auto-search. If the url given to the cgi does not match the various standard formats (nn.html, nn@, nn!, ..., nn a number) it will start a search for possibly matching pages. A single word must be used, but capitalization can be used to mark inner components. The search will automatically add * between them before starting the search (LaVi => La*Vi for example). '''1999 Mar 9, AK''': The [recent] page is a quite good approximation of a sitemap, but currently had the problem that some huge content (Books, Tcl-URL!) was added to the wiki in the last days, overflowing the limit of 50 entries quite drastically. Many of the useful other pages were ousted because of this. Setting the limit to 100 entries could. BSA 23-Mar-1999: Q: Why do we have to edit in yet another special format, What is wrong with just using html? (other than complexity for new users). NB I am new to the wiki experience and haven't read the FAQ if indeed there is a link to it here. AK, Mar 24, 1999: IMHO you already gave the answer: '''complexity for new users'''. A wiki tries to encourage readers to start writing too. A (simple) formatting language which is mainly text with interspersed commands should fare better in this regard than something like HTML, where it is quite easy to get lost in heaps of markup with interspersed fragments of text. ''It's up to the people writing the Wiki to make sure that new users can find their way around. On Ward Cunningham's wiki this is done by a writing pages to welcome new users and roadmap pages for major topics.'' DGP, 1999 April 20: It's ''really'' annoying that you can't italicize more than once per line. Also, how does one include a literal "[" in their text ( I guess I just did. ) without triggering another page marker. It's awkward trying to document Tcl usage with these quirks. JC: On normal lines (not bullet lists and such), you can italicize by starting a new line, since formatting codes are recognized per line, even though they end up concatenated into one, see [WOBBLE] for an example. Brackets can be escaped by doubling them. Like [[ and ]]. ''I've added a note in the [Formatting Rules] page, thanks.''