> I'm not sure this is really necessary, as I have no burden to try and > persuade PmWiki users to defect.
That's why I said no flame war. :) I see it this way. It's hard to make an informed choice between two wikis that share a lot of their design. It's not about persuading but about educating. You say that BoltWire's roots are found in a PmWiki plugin. You express how great PmWiki is. But only after digging through the docs and creating a site with both wikis, I got a slight impression of their differences. (Beside some KB, licenses and some speed.) That's why I mentioned it. If it had been clear to me before, I would have saved quite some time and would have had fewer question marks in my head. > But a couple things I would point out > is that > > 1) The command system in BoltWire is the most radical > different--allowing you to customize any action in your site anyway > you want. There is nothing comparable in PmWiki. It does have some > limited form processing, but it's actions are defined in the core > rather than in the site. This was why I developed BoltWire--that > flexibility. > > 2) A second thing is the hierarchical system in BoltWire. PmWiki only > has two level groups, which always felt to me quite limiting. > BoltWire has also extended the capabilities of its hierarchical system > to several more areas than PmWiki. > > There are other significant differences but these are the first two > that come to mind. I should note, some of these capabilities are > partially possible in PmWiki through extensions (like Zap, and > Hg--both of which I authored). But in doing so I kept bumping up into > limitations that just didn't seem necessary. So they are only partial > solutions. Excellent. If I only understood the practical implications especially of point 1 before I got started, it would have saved me lots of time and effort. As point 1 is quite unique to BoltWire, it's the thing that is most difficult to grasp. While probably everybody can imagine what hierarchical pages or access control means, it was not possible to imagine the power and awesomeness of point 1. And by that I missed BoltWire's heart until I was investing hours to build a site with it. > As for speed, it was an inexact estimate. I setup two similar sites > (obviously not identical) and ran the different stopwatch features on > both. Generally BoltWire ran 2x as fast. That was a long time ago > though--and the difference may be smaller now than then, as we have > more processing going on nowadays to support the new features. Part of > the speed was simply BoltWire small size. The smaller the code the > faster things generally execute. When we get out 4.x I hope to get it > even smaller and doubtless it will get faster... But trying to compare > the two would be quite difficult unless you somehow setup identical > sites with identical skins. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. This was the point where I felt like you were trying to persuade me. Stating that was "2x as fast" without showing the setup, without mentioning version numbers seemed like an unfair marketing trick to me. Actually, I would be less worried about a page that educates the user about factual differences than about this potentially unfair statement. > P.S. If it were up to me I would delete the comparison page. Unless we > want to start setting up comparison pages for all the major wiki's. > (Which I don't). Wikimatrix is a good start. The features page is a > good second step. Even without understanding point 1 from above, it was a matter of minutes to dismiss all major wikis except BoltWire and PmWiki using Wikimatrix. It was easy to see that I was looking for one of these, but Wikimatrix couldn't tell me which one. They seemed so similar. I didn't know which one I was looking for until I understood mainly point 1. If you like, delete the comparison page. What I wouldn't delete is the goal I had in mind with that page: Someone who visits BoltWire.com for the first time should understand instantly and right on the front page why BoltWire is special. This is more important than everything else. Be it news about the current version, system requirements, introducing extensions… I am not even sure if I read "Our Secret" back then (if that paragraph is that old). It's the central thing the whole buzz is about. And it's hidden between news, downloads, extensions and a feature list which not even mentions "the secret". Or maybe I skipped when I read "ZAP engine" and thought: "What or who on earth is ZAP? I do know Zapp Brannigan but…" Foremost, I would try to make sure that a first time visitor understands the dimensions of this sentence: "Create fully interactive sites without having to learn a line of programming." Everything else is really just the dot on the 'i'. Markus -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BoltWire" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/boltwire?hl=en.
