zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[Dotan Cohen <dotancohen@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 15:19, Marco Cevoli <marco.cevoli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> When I read the posts of this mailing list, I'm always suprised by how
> many different uses Zim Wiki can be adapted to. Sometimes a program
> reaches a huge success when its users are aware of all the program's
> possibilities. So I was wondering that perhaps we can start to collect
> all users' cases, that is a small description about how you use Zim
> Wiki in your daily routine. We can later "pack" these testimonials in
> a more marketing-oriented text that Jaap can publish on the website.
> The ultimate goal of all this would be to spread the word about Zim
> Wiki among the largest audience possible. This might increase
> donations and give Jaap (and other devs) some freedom, so that they
> can devote more time to the project. Well formatted and presented,
> these testimonials could be placed in the documentation pages.
>
> It's just an idea. Let me know what you think.
>

I think that the idea of collecting user experiences to promote Zim is
great, but I am not sure that now is the time. I really love Zim, I
use it extensively. The recent 0.55 release addresses some key issues
and makes for a very pleasant and productive user experience.

However, Zim is a bit unpolished in some key areas and I feel that
these "paper cuts" should be addressed before actively promoting the
application. Understand that my intention is to improve Zim, not to
berate. This is all constructive criticism.

The most glaring issue is the fact that Zim cannot handle arbitrary
text for input. I have lost important data due to this fact. See these
two related bugs:

Do not parse input as wikicode
https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/585300

Option to disable all autolinking
https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/585301

Secondly, the wrong icon is used for highlight. This is misleading and
confusing to users:

Highlight feature uses underline icon
https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/271916

Add underline feature
https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/271918

Another issue that needs to be worked out is the presentation of the
new Table of Contents widget. It currently works well and adds
much-needed functionality to Zim. However, it is poorly presented and
needs to be further developed. Peer Neubert has a slightly modified
version that adds some features but is missing others.

If these issues are addressed then Zim could really be world-class
software. However these little issues, especially the first issue
mentioned, make me reluctant to recommend Zim right now.

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://gibberish.co.il
http://what-is-what.com