changed:
-
The software that powers this wiki. Originally developed as a [[Zope]] product and since extended to work within [[Plone]]. This legacy shows in several ways.
What’s Good
-----------
* Stable code base with active developer community. New releases every few weeks.
* Fairly capable as a standalone CMS.
* Fully functional with or without Plone.
* A preview feature that’s standard everywhere but missing in Plone.
* Automatic page id generation that turns out non-ugly ids.
* A hierarchical system of organisation that does not reflect in the URL, allowing unlimited reorganisation without breaking links.
What’s Not
----------
* Default CamelCase markup can be turned off, but the ``!!CamelCase`` no-link convention continues to apply unless ``!`` marks are doubled, as in ``!!!CamelCase``. Makes pasting code in a wiki page painful.
* Wikipedia-style explicit links are possible, but links have to display the full name of the page.
* No redirects or aliases. The plural and singular forms of a term become separate pages.
* Wiki undo/history feature is really a ZODB database feature and hence not reliable at the user level.
* Not a first class Plone object, thereby losing out on Plonish features like keywords (aka tags).
* Two template systems (for with or without Plone), with no clear distinction between them, making customisation tricky. Way too much legacy [[DTML]] for comfort in 2006.
* Hardcoded hacks to work around Plone template structure, making customisation trickier. This site’s implementation required patching the code, making upgrades non-trivial.
Alternatives
------------
* `Wicked <http://plone.org/products/wicked>`__ is a framework for Plone that allows wiki links within Plone content objects — but only if the developer opted to turn it on. Wicked is not an end user product. When it becomes better accepted, I’ll consider migrating to it from ZWiki.
Resources
---------
* `Project website <http://zwiki.org/>`__.
* `Feature comparison with TWiki, MoinMoin and MediaWiki <http://www.wikimatrix.org/compare/TWiki+MoinMoin+Zwiki+MediaWiki>`__.
