It does have limitations that bug me sometimes. Nevertheless I think it's a

The only thing that bugs me right now is that there's no shorthand for changing colour. I mentioned this on the list ages ago but got no response :( I wonder if anyone's got any ideas on how it could be done other than by <font color=""></font>? cheers, Chris

On 21 Apr 2000 16:25:01 -0500, Patrick Phalen wrote: [...]

There is a common need among open source and open standards communities (including Zope) to evolve discussions from loose and unstructured to something finally more formalized and ordered (e.g., specifications, documentation, etc.). The difference with the Zope community is that we actually have tools which could be adapted to that purpose.

Wikis provide one model for the loose first stage (Usenet and threaded mailing list archives provide another). In a way, they overlay a brainstorming model onto the network model. They permit fleeting thoughts to be "captured in a bottle." The problem is how then to migrate from the loose to the structured, once the discussion has run its course and it's time to organize the material and publish something formal (documentation, for example).

Of course this can be accomplished by someone laboriously combing through the Wiki or the archive and hand-assembling something, but it would be nice to have tools or hooks to automate the process.

[...]

representation. What Wikis do well is capturing freeform, brainstorming-style discussion. Thereafter, it would be beneficial to have different representations of the information they contain, perhaps including a tree or outline view.

Or maybe there is some other tool available which already addresses this. E.g., there is wonderful application program called "Inspiration" (Win/Mac) which allows a user to bring up a graphical view and add boxes containing concepts (text and/or images), and then freely interconnect the boxes arbitrarily with lines to form a "concept map." Then, one mouse click can turn that into a collapsible/expandable outline view.

Bottom line: is there a way to parse a Wiki and generate an outline view?

I've been testing some of these concepts out at the research center where I work. It's quite difficult to get people together to brainstorm, and when we do, the time is mainly spent educating people concerning pertinent issues that they didn't even know existed. IMO, the Squish-dots and wiki's don't work so well at combining education and free-form discussions as the edu aspects need more structure to them. So the structure you mention which is needed after the fact is also needed before the fact. I wrote a piddly little ZDiscussion/Cataloged ZClass I called ZAgonos ('Out of Z list' :^) to impose a searchable, heirarchical interface on edu-discussion topics, such as tips, how-tos, design issues, implementation plans, etc. ZAgons are folderish ZClasses which have a topic structure and include a tree display of child ZAgons (and certain other objects). Each Zagon shows only it's tree, but there is a frame-based display similar to the Zope management interface which lets you browse the entire 'list'. It's trivial to drop text from a discussion into a new Zagon, etc. but not automatic, and the Zdiscussions are not tightly woven enough to really make them reasonable for interactive development. The tree-interface and catalog make it trivial to locate information that is buried pretty deeply, and since the structre is uniform and simple, it makes it easy to navigate, locate, and add information. What I'd really like would be to have the ability to morph heirarchy and form onto an object. The ZAgons force heirarchy onto the information, but obviously that isn't the way it really needs to be done. A good example might be an Implementation Plan for Security Issues: One might start out with an Abstract titled "We Need Better Security in this Department". The abstract could be followed by a list of issues that concern the instigator. Following the list of issues would likely be a list of resources including links to man pages, external URLs, etc for more information related to the issues. A mechanism (zwiki, whatever) for allowing others to comment on the topic generates enough interest and questions that some or all of the list issues are wrapped into a tree structure. Say the SSH item generates a lot of heat as it will require more education of users (who would rather just let someone else take care of their security) and breaks into discussions regarding SSH1 vs SSH2 and whether or not to implement a keyservers, etc., all requiring more links and documentation (hopefully in a structured fashion) to assist. Ahh, but there's the larger issue of cleartext passwords and imap clients/servers which really ought to sit above SSH, so the tree is changed. More structured info about SSL and which IMAP clients behave themselves and which do not is added... Soon you have a lot of information which would be almost unmanageable without a heirarchy. As you navigate the tree, each branch or leaf can be structured as its parent, searches operate in context (only search child objects), and topics can be marked as links and cross-referenced (and anchored) in other locations automatically. IMO, workgroup systems without some sort of heirarchy, contextual searches, etc. just become unmanageable and cease to be useful VERY quickly. Ideas?