[dokuwiki] Re: about 'search' and wiki syntax tags

Dokuwiki has all solutions for all problems ;-)
But suffers from a common condition among applications supporting plugins... The core program is rarely fixed to run sensibly when a plugin can be written to work around the "problem", leaving installations "broken" until people discover the "fix".
This is generally lauded for maintaining backwards compatibility... ie. continue to have new "broken" installations just so old installations continue to work in the previously expected (but broken) state.
Lesson to learn: Plugins that "fix" a problem with the core application should never be written. Instead, submit a patch that makes the application run in a sensible manner, and continually point people to the submitted patch so that a critical mass pressures the developers to get it applied.
Whether or not this applies to DokuWiki search is left up to debate. Personally, I think it is more sensible that a search is performed on wiki output, since it makes no sense that when I click on the results link, the search term is nowhere to be found because it only matched the wiki markup.
Now, the great thing about a pluggable application like DokuWiki is that these sort of issues *can* be fixed in the correct manner without breaking the ever so sacred backwards compatibility... ship a plugin with the core that provides support for the "broken" implementation... ie a search plugin that supports searching wiki markup as well as the wiki output but make the core behave sensibly without the plugin. 

chris

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