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Petko

Development Checklist · Priorities · Contributions · Watchlists

Hi, I'm Petko Yotov, a.k.a. 5ko. I have a passion for free software and free culture, knowledge sharing and teaching.

I discovered PmWiki in 2004 and followed its development, but really dived into it around mid-2006. Before (and after) I have worked with other wikis (MediaWiki, Tavi, Wikini, Wacko) and CMSs, but I find the PmWiki code, design principles and personalization possibilities extremely attractive.

I have some knowledge of the PmWiki internals. I try, when I have time, to reply to questions at the mailing lists, pmwiki-users, pmwiki-devel and pmwiki-users-fr. I have written a number of recipes, listed below.

I recently graduated as Architect. I also have some experience as server administrator, website and intranet consultant (layout, navigation, content and accessibility), teacher/trainer in Mathematics (high school), Descriptive geometry (university) and CAD (enterprise).

You can contact me at :

• e-mail: 5ko snail 5ko period fr.
• 5ko.fr -- personal wiki, mostly in French language, and links to my other sites.
• tl.5ko.fr -- a wiki for testing my picture recipes (Thumblist, Mini, Maxi)
• galleries.accent.bg/Cookbook -- some other recipes and tests

Development Checklist

I was recently granted the privilege to contribute directly to the PmWiki Core development. Here are a couple of things that I consider important, and that I will respect.

1. Follow the PmWiki Philosophy. These are the founding principles of the software, the development and the community, and new versions will follow them too.
2. Serve the community. My work should be seen like a "tool" that does what is required and obvious. Do technical work, do not decide about major directions to be taken. I may have my opinions but I feel best decisions are taken in discussions, when possible by consensus.
3. Be Transparent. This is Free software, transparent by definition, but if you have any questions about my actions, ask me.
4. Delegate. It will be great if more people could help out, especially for:
   • testing recent releases and nightly builds,
   • catching and reporting bugs,
   • improving the documentation,
   • helping new users on the mailing lists and on the wiki,
   • reviewing/testing recipes, skins and bundles,
   • hopefully soon, enabling recipes and skins on pmwiki.org.
5. My personal style or philosophy, or goal, is probably summed as "Simplicity". I'll try not to complicate things more than it is absolutely required.
6. My own cookbook recipes are switched to stand-by mode. Eventual bugs will be fixed, but expect few new features. (The recipes I use daily are more likely to evolve, if I find ways to simplify or improve them.)

Priority Checklist

1. Security bugfixes
2. Bugfixes
3. Documentation updates, translations
4. New features -- I have a conservative approach:
   • Unless a major benefit is demonstrated, don't add to core. (Cookbook recipe.)
   • OK for small and simple changes, in the spirit of the PmWiki design, history and philosophy.
   • If in doubt, don't add to core. (Cookbook recipe.)
   • Ask Pm for review.

My contributions

Most interesting/popular recipes I wrote, and which I use daily:

• Mini -- Simple, lightweight, un-bloated thumbnail and gallery generator
• Maxi -- An image viewer with inline zoom, suitable for large drawings or panoramas
• Reminder -- displays a list of birthdays and tasks for the next days
• SQLite -- store wiki data in an SQLite database instead of on the filesystem
• Watch lists -- Track the latest changes to a list of pages. See my watchlists below.
• Flipbox -- Flippable checkboxes and checklists
• UnToggle -- A show/hide switch where the contents is visible even for browsers with JavaScript disabled.
• GMap -- A simple and easy inclusion of Google Maps into wiki pages.

Tips and tricks I wrote (I have them all enabled on my wikis):

• EditTemplatesMenu -- Allow authors a choice among several pre-filled templates before creating new pages.
• NotsavedWarning -- informs the user if he moves away from a page without saving it
• RecentChanges Deletion -- how to delete a *.RecentChanges page
• New Group Warning -- how to display a warning when a user is creating a page in a non-existant wiki group, without blocking the page creation.
• UTF-8 -- a collection of tips and fixes for international wikis
• Markup tricks (the section "Using a new wiki markup [# ... #]")
• Track Changes -- Ways to more easily detect and verify all recent edits
• ExternalLinks -- a number of tweaks and settings
• Recent Uploads Log -- How to log all uploads to the RecentChanges pages
• DeltaBytesRecentChanges - how many characters were added/deleted when a page was modified (in RecentChanges pages)

Other recipes I wrote :

• Thumb list -- an omnipotent picture gallery (I recommend Mini if Mini's features are enough for your needs)
• Rating2 -- a very simple vote count or page rating for the Cookbook
• Limit Diffs per page -- paginate the "diff" output (when viewing the page history)
• IncludeSection -- Include a section from the first available among a list of pages
• AttachImageSize -- Generate width and height attributes for attached images
• Dots in links -- How to enable dots in wiki links
• GTD Task List Manager -- An experimental JavaScript GTD task/todo list manager
• Time zones -- display all dates and times in your time zone and time format
• More custom page variables -- Additional custom page variables for use in pages, forms, includes and conditional markup.
• Link titles -- to external and internal links
• As Spaced function in UTF-8 - This tip will save you a lot of frustration! (now added to core)
• Textarea -- How to pre-fill a "textarea" input control with a value
• 01096 -- Disable all markup for PlainText Wiki
• Tracking downloads in PmWiki (recipe in the mailing list)
• the PmWikiBg localization in Bulgarian language

Notes:

• PmWiki.PageVariables
• PmWiki.Internationalizations - This tip will save you days of headaches!!! See "Notes" section
• Cookbook.PerGroupSubDirectories - the "Per-group sub-sub directories" section
• PITS.01059 -- Allow Drafts for actions other than Edit

Mailing lists : pmwiki.user gmane fr | pmwiki.devel : gmane anon

• July 02, 2009, at 07:55 PM PmWiki time
• July 03, 2009, at 02:55 AM CET