I feel the need to speak up on a couple issues brought up by this thread: 1) I have found ZAP to be a very useful recipe, though its documentation still needs work. I am using it on three of my production sites and it works flawlessly. Because all three sites are password-protected, I can't demonstrate them to the list, but if individuals would like to try them out, contact me and I'll send you a password. The DataPlates demo site at http://workscited.net/dataplates is still using last week's version of ZAP, but I plan to upgrade it later today and will post a follow-up so that you can see that it does, in fact, work as advertised.
2) I have found Dan to be a pleasure to work with, always responsive to questions and suggestions and always positive and constructive in his tone. I admit I was initially reluctant to work with him because he is ambitious and has a rhetorical flair, but I can't argue with his results: he programs rings around me, and he seems to test his code more thoroughly than I do before releasing it. When I browse through the pmwiki-users digests, there are only two people whose posts I always read: Pm's and Dan's. 3) I have achieved far more in the past months by working with Dan and ZAP than I could have by creating my own recipe. I can only imagine how great ZAP and Fox would be today if Hans could have stood to cooperate with Dan and produce one recipe instead of two. Forced to choose between the two, I have had to ignore Fox, because ZAP does just what I need. 3) I agree with Dan that speculations about the perceived instability of ZAP need to be backed up by evidence; otherwise they are libel -- my word, not Dan's. Clearly, the development cycle has been very fast and a lot of the syntax has changed, causing some ZAP forms to break. But a broken ZAP form is not nearly as dangerous as you might think; mostly it just doesn't do anything. 4) I applaud the recent name change to Acme. I think it's a much better name than ZAP (or Fox, for that matter). Personally I would love to see the ZAP name phased out as the FASTdata name was, but I realize that would create a lot of work for all of us. 5) Although I was as dismayed and confused as anyone by the sudden name change and by Dan's references to writing his own wiki engine, I find Hans's allegations about Dan's motives totally inappropriate and uncalled for. It's one thing to ask someone publicly about their motives, it's another to publicly accuse someone of having different motives from what they have said. If I were Dan I would be furious at Hans right now, and I am very impressed that he has maintained an upbeat (if occasionally sarcastic) sense of humor. So, my two cents: knock if off, Hans. If you really can't work with Dan, by all means make Fox better. But there's no need to libel either him or his work. His "record" -- both good and bad -- stands for itself without your contributions. --Ben _______________________________________________ pmwiki-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.pmichaud.com/mailman/listinfo/pmwiki-users
