- xwiki-devs@xwiki.org - lists.xwiki.org

XWiki standalone package proposal
by Sébastien Gaïde 19 Nov '05

19 Nov '05

Hi list, In order to ease XWiki installation for those who don't want to deal with tomcat/mysql, Ludovic asked me to work on a standalone installation of XWiki based on jetty and hsqldb. I think I get to a point where I have something useful, so I wanted to describe what I have done, and if Ludo agrees to create an account for me, I will be able to commit some files in the next few days ;-) So, I have added a 'standalone' target into the build.xml file (see below). This target expands a jetty.5.1.5 archive, removes the sample applications, inserts the xwiki release (exploded war) into the webapps directory, copies some configuration files in order to make xwiki use an in-process hsqldb database. hsqldb database files are also copied into the package. The database data have been taken from the mysql export (xwiki-db-0.9.2.sql). At the root of this package, 4 scripts are eventually copied in order to help user to start/stop the application server (start_xwiki.bat|sh, stop_xwiki.bat|sh). The produced package is usable 'as-is' simply by copying the files somewhere on your disk. And yes, it works on a USB key also. It weights a total of 37 MB. With this target, I have also written a basic Nullsoft Installer script, in order to help Windows users in installing the package. Basically this installer installs all the files produced by the standalone target in a user specified directory, then create 3 shortcuts in the Windows start menu: start, stop (à la tomcat) and uninstall. Before doing this the installer checks if a jre 1.4 or newer is installed (I'm not sure that 1.4 is required for xwiki, this can be changed easily), if not the user is redirected to the download section of the Java web site. This installer weight a total of 30 MB. On the todo list of this installer : - add the possibility to specify a port number for the jetty server ; - install a bundled jre if needed (have to check the sun license in order to be sure this is possible) - add a final window explaining what to do after the installation (use the start/stop shortcuts, start a browser...) On the todo list of this standalone installation : - add an installer for Mac OS X platforms - add an installer for Linux platforms (autopackage ?), may be not so useful, since Linux users are more acquainted to tomcat/mysql installation ... Any question, comment, idea would be greatly appreciated. Seb. here is the standalone target code :  <property name="standalone.base.dir" value="${basedir}/standalone"/> <property name="standalone.jetty.archive.dir" value="jetty-5.1.5"/> <property name="standalone.jetty.archive" value="${standalone.base.dir}/${standalone.jetty.archive.dir}.zip"/> <property name="standalone.package.name" value="xwikionjetty"/> <property name="standalone.release.dir" value="${release.dir}/${standalone.package.name}"/> <fileset id="standalone.db.bootstrap" dir="${standalone.base.dir}/db" includes="xwiki_db.*"/> <fileset id="standalone.config" dir="${standalone.base.dir}/config" includes="xwiki.cfg, hibernate.cfg.hsql.xml"/> <fileset id="standalone.scripts" dir="${standalone.base.dir}/scripts" includes="*"/> <target name="standalone" depends="release">    <unzip src="${standalone.jetty.archive}" dest="${release.dir}"> <patternset> <exclude name="**/ext/xercesImpl.jar"/> <exclude name="**/ext/xml-apis.jar"/> <exclude name="**/ext/xmlParserAPIs-2.5.jar"/> </patternset> </unzip> <move todir="${standalone.release.dir}"> <fileset dir="${release.dir}/${standalone.jetty.archive.dir}"/> </move>  <delete file="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/javadoc.war"/> <delete dir="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/template"/>  <mkdir dir="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/xwiki"/> <unwar src="${release.warfile}" dest="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/xwiki"/>  <copy todir="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/xwiki/WEB-INF" overwrite="true"> <fileset refid="standalone.config"/> </copy>  <mkdir dir="${standalone.release.dir}/db"/> <copy todir="${standalone.release.dir}/db"> <fileset refid="standalone.db.bootstrap" /> </copy>  <copy todir="${standalone.release.dir}"> <fileset refid="standalone.scripts"/> </copy> </target>

5 7

Re: [xwiki-dev] XWiki standalone package proposal
by dennis.coonich＠comcast.net 18 Nov '05

18 Nov '05

The sounds awsome. I really would like a standalone package that runs off a USB key. I teach tech classes at a local college and have started using XWiki for presentations and documentation. Sometimes the colleges internet connection is not so reliable so I have fretted about not having my presentations available during class. To overcome this I have been bringing a laptop configured as a linux server with xwiki installed hosting all my presentations and notes. As you can see XWiki on a USB key would be absolutlely useful Great work! Dennis Dennis > Hi list, > > In order to ease XWiki installation for those who don't want to deal > with tomcat/mysql, Ludovic asked me to work on a standalone installation > of XWiki based on jetty and hsqldb. > > I think I get to a point where I have something useful, so I wanted to > describe what I have done, and if Ludo agrees to create an account for > me, I will be able to commit some files in the next few days ;-) > > So, I have added a 'standalone' target into the build.xml file (see > below). This target expands a jetty.5.1.5 archive, removes the sample > applications, inserts the xwiki release (exploded war) into the webapps > directory, copies some configuration files in order to make xwiki use an > in-process hsqldb database. hsqldb database files are also copied into > the package. The database data have been taken from the mysql export > (xwiki-db-0.9.2.sql). > > At the root of this package, 4 scripts are eventually copied in order to > help user to start/stop the application server (start_xwiki.bat|sh, > stop_xwiki.bat|sh). > > The produced package is usable 'as-is' simply by copying the files > somewhere on your disk. And yes, it works on a USB key also. It weights > a total of 37 MB. > > With this target, I have also written a basic Nullsoft Installer script, > in order to help Windows users in installing the package. Basically this > installer installs all the files produced by the standalone target in a > user specified directory, then create 3 shortcuts in the Windows start > menu: start, stop (à la tomcat) and uninstall. Before doing this the > installer checks if a jre 1.4 or newer is installed (I'm not sure that > 1.4 is required for xwiki, this can be changed easily), if not the user > is redirected to the download section of the Java web site. This > installer weight a total of 30 MB. > > On the todo list of this installer : > > - add the possibility to specify a port number for the jetty server ; > - install a bundled jre if needed (have to check the sun license in > order to be sure this is possible) > - add a final window explaining what to do after the installation (use > the start/stop shortcuts, start a browser...) > > On the todo list of this standalone installation : > > - add an installer for Mac OS X platforms > - add an installer for Linux platforms (autopackage ?), may be not so > useful, since Linux users are more acquainted to tomcat/mysql > installation ... > > Any question, comment, idea would be greatly appreciated. > > Seb. > > here is the standalone target code : > >  > <property name="standalone.base.dir" value="${basedir}/standalone"/> > <property name="standalone.jetty.archive.dir" value="jetty-5.1.5"/> > <property name="standalone.jetty.archive" > value="${standalone.base.dir}/${standalone.jetty.archive.dir}.zip"/> > <property name="standalone.package.name" value="xwikionjetty"/> > <property name="standalone.release.dir" > value="${release.dir}/${standalone.package.name}"/> > > <fileset id="standalone.db.bootstrap" > dir="${standalone.base.dir}/db" includes="xwiki_db.*"/> > <fileset id="standalone.config" dir="${standalone.base.dir}/config" > includes="xwiki.cfg, hibernate.cfg.hsql.xml"/> > <fileset id="standalone.scripts" > dir="${standalone.base.dir}/scripts" includes="*"/> > > <target name="standalone" depends="release"> >  >  >  > > <unzip src="${standalone.jetty.archive}" dest="${release.dir}"> > <patternset> > <exclude name="**/ext/xercesImpl.jar"/> > <exclude name="**/ext/xml-apis.jar"/> > <exclude name="**/ext/xmlParserAPIs-2.5.jar"/> > </patternset> > </unzip> > <move todir="${standalone.release.dir}"> > <fileset dir="${release.dir}/${standalone.jetty.archive.dir}"/> > </move> > >  > <delete file="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/javadoc.war"/> > <delete dir="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/template"/> > >  > <mkdir dir="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/xwiki"/> > <unwar src="${release.warfile}" > dest="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/xwiki"/> > >  > <copy todir="${standalone.release.dir}/webapps/xwiki/WEB-INF" > overwrite="true"> > <fileset refid="standalone.config"/> > </copy> > >  > <mkdir dir="${standalone.release.dir}/db"/> > <copy todir="${standalone.release.dir}/db"> > <fileset refid="standalone.db.bootstrap" /> > </copy> > >  > <copy todir="${standalone.release.dir}"> > <fileset refid="standalone.scripts"/> > </copy> > </target> > > > > > > > > -- > You receive this message as a subscriber of the xwiki-dev(a)objectweb.org mailing > list. > To unsubscribe: mailto:xwiki-dev-unsubscribe@objectweb.org > For general help: mailto:sympa@objectweb.org?subject=help > ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

1 0

Groovy, Velocity, and XWiki syntax processing issues
by Stephen Schaub 18 Nov '05

18 Nov '05

When XWiki renders a document, the interactions between the Groovy, Velocity, and Wiki (Radeox?) syntax processing can lead to unexpected and undesirable behavior. There have been posts on this list in the past where this issue has been discussed. However, I'm not aware that any consensus has emerged as to how to deal with these problems. To summarize, here are a few of the issues that I'm aware of: * Getting XWiki to render a bit of text without doing any syntax processing on it can be difficult. For example, the {pre} ... {/pre} markup turns off XWiki syntax processing, but not Groovy processing. * The # symbol is used both to do numbered lists and is also used for Groovy processing. If a user wants to create a numbered list and forgets to put a space after the #, he can run into trouble. The following example will cause a stack dump: #bring coffee #include doughnuts * Code samples on a Wiki page sometimes don't render correctly, due to conflicts with Velocity syntax processing. The following C/C++ code sample results in a runtime stack dump: {code} #include <stdio.h> ... {code} * Groovy and Velocity both use $varname syntax. I think I've read some posts in the past where this was an issue -- although I can't come up with any examples at the moment. * A usability issue: Most XWiki tags ({table}, {code}, etc.) come in pairs. The closing tag has no slash. For example: {table} ... {table}. However, the {pre} tag does have a closing slash: {pre} ... {/pre}. This inconsistency is annoying and causes difficulties for new users. * A significant usability issue for Windows users: Pathnames contain backslashes (\). XWiki uses the backslash as an escape character. So attempting to put a UNC path like \\myserver\myshare\mydoc.txt in an XWiki document triggers an XWiki runtime exception. Boy, is that frustrating for new XWiki users. The solution is to wrap the path in {pre} .. {/pre}, but the error message gives the user no clue what the problem was, much less how to correct it. Here are some proposals for discussion: 1. {pre} ... {/pre} should turn off ALL syntax processing of its contents. 2. {code} ... {code} should turn off ALL syntax processing, except for syntax coloring. 3. {pre} should allow {pre} as a closing tag. 4. Consider requiring users to explicitly enable Groovy/Velocity processing for selected Wiki documents as needed. In the page editor, provide two checkboxes: "Perform Groovy Processing" and "Perform Velocity Processing". The user could separately enable either Groovy or Velocity processing, or both. People who enable them would presumably be in a better position to deal with the kinds of syntax conflicts that would occur. 5. Provide more user-friendly error messages when a Groovy or Velocity processing exception occurs. Show the Wiki source line that caused the problem. I haven't opened a JIRA issue for this yet, because I'm not sure how best to word it. But I think this is a high-priority issue that should be carefully addressed before the 1.0 release. This may be an issue that warrants a page on the xwiki.org developer site. I'll be glad to start one if the developers desire it -- perhaps here: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/Discussions Stephen

8 15

Fun: HOWTO Spot a Wannabe Web Standards Advocate
by Jim Stuttard 12 Nov '05

12 Nov '05

Thought you might enjoy this. ------- Forwarded message ------- From: "Karl Dubost" <karl(a)w3.org> To: "'public-evangelist(a)w3.org' w3. org" <public-evangelist(a)w3.org> Subject: HOWTO Spot a Wannabe Web Standards Advocate Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:10:30 -0000 Evangelistas, [[[ HOWTO Spot a Wannabe Web Standards Advocate If there is a match, you have spotted a wannabe. * Talks about the importance of the alt tag. * Claims and are deprecated. * And spells it %u201Cdepreciated%u201D. * Uses , because is presentational. * Wants software to use and when the UI says italic and bold. * Marks up quoted text as <cite>. * Complains about upper-case tags in HTML. * Claims XHTML 1.0 is more semantic than HTML 4.01. * Claims XHTML 1.0 is more structured than HTML 4.01. * Claims XHTML 1.0 is less presentational than HTML 4.01. * Claims browsers parse XHTML served as text/html faster than they parse HTML. * Refers to %u201Cthe benefits of XHTML%u201D without specifying what the benefits are. * Uses large XHTML 1.0 Transitional documents with table layouts while claiming enhanced compatibility with handheld devices thanks to XHTML. * %u201CFuture proofs%u201D a site by migrating from HTML 4.01 Transitional to XHTML 1.0 Transitional and keeps serving it as text/ html with all the old JavaScript scripts in place. * Uses the XML empty element notation on pages that are supposed to be HTML pages. * Complains about doctypeless application/xhtml+xml or SVG documents and smugly points to validator.w3.org. * Claims all tables are evil. * Advocates pixel-based absolute CSS positioning as the righteous replacement for evil tables. * Changes //EN at the end of the public identifier in the doctype to the language code of the language the page is written in. * Omits the namespace declaration in XHTML or SVG and claims it is OK, because it validates. * Serves documents written using a home-grown XML vocabulary along with an XSLT transformation to HTML to browsers instead of serving HTML, because XML is more semantic. ]]] -- HOWTO Spot a Wannabe Web Standards Advocate http://hsivonen.iki.fi/wannabe/ Wed, 27 Jul 2005 17:06:31 GMT -- Jim Stuttard

1 0

XWiki DB Schema Architecture
by Jim Stuttard 06 Nov '05

06 Nov '05

Hi, As tempus fugit towards release 1.0 I have a bit of a basic architecture problem with the current DB schema. Why does XWiki's DB schema depend on a number of proxy primary keys - eg. ID: bigint? XWikiListClasses has a primary key of id, and name; XWikiClasses has only a numeric id and name doesn't seem to matter. Is this just me missing some basic idea? Doesn't this hide the cardinalities, semantic connections and non-transitive dependencies captured by primary keys in a fully-normalised relational schema? Currently this information would have to be inferred from the existing schema, taking some time to do. And so I can't tell whether the schema is normalised or not. An example might be a Document. If memory serves me, Documents are frequently uniquely identified by the minimal primary key of {title, author, publication date}. If you ask "What are the chances of 2 different documents having the same author name, title and publication timestamp?" then this satisfices most conditions. An XWikiDoc however has a large set of required fields and a single key. Neither MySql nor any other RDBMS I know of uses single-field primary keys. They are only required in the binary relational model. I have always thought that good OODB design demanded *explicit* de-normalisation if needed? Cheers Jim -- Jim Stuttard

3 2

Patch for com.xpn.xwiki.doc.XWikiDocument
by Xavier MOGHRABI 04 Nov '05

04 Nov '05

Hi I'd like to propose a patch for com.xpn.xwiki.doc.XWikiDocument in order to add a function that can allow user to create attachments. Regards -- Xavier MOGHRABI - Consortium ObjectWeb Email: xavier.moghrabi at objectweb.org Phone: +33 4 76 61 52 35

1 0

version summary
by Matthew Conway 31 Oct '05

31 Oct '05

I've noticed that the version number (correctly) gets bumped for every new comment or image upload. However, I would like a means to show a list of revisions for _just_ content changes, i.e. exlude the revisions which were created for new comments and attachments. How would I do this in some velocity code? Thanks, Matt

2 1

Connection Pooling
by Sam Taha 31 Oct '05

31 Oct '05

Greetings, I am new to xwiki and was wondering how some of the multi-company features of xwiki work. From my readings it sounds like one must create a separate mysql db for each new company/tenant. If this is true would this not require a seperate database connection pools for each company? Are Oracle or Postgresql supported? I know with these two databases one can create database namespaces (something mysql does not have). This would allow the same jdbc driver to reference mulitple namespaced schemes and thus use the same pool. Anyway, any thoughts would be apprciated. I am looking to setup xwiki in a multi company setup and was looking for some insight. Thanks, Sam --------------------------------- Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.

4 5

Problems with XWiki links with non-alphanumeric characters
by Stephen Schaub 28 Oct '05

28 Oct '05

Here's an issue I feel should be addressed before the 1.0 release: Create a wiki page with links like the following: [Images: Good or Bad?] [C++ Examples] XWiki renders the first link like this: <a class="wikicreatelink" href="">Images: Good or Bad??</a> It's completely broken. The second link is rendered like this: <a href="/xwiki/bin/view/Sandbox/C+++Examples">C++ Examples</a> XWiki should be able to gracefully handle Wiki links with non alpha-numeric characters. Here are my thoughts on a solution to the problem: 1. When rendering a Wiki link, XWiki could strip out all non-alphanumeric characters. Thus, a link like [Images: Good or Bad?] would render as <a href="/.../ImagesGoodorBad">Images: Good or Bad?</a>. Benefits: Straightforward to implement. Yields nice clean document names. Drawbacks: Presents backwards compatibility problems; several different Wiki links could map to the same document name. 2. XWiki could perform URL encoding on the Wiki links. Benefits: Better backwards compatibility (I think). Drawbacks: Yucky document names. Perhaps there are other solutions somewhere in between. My personal preference is #1. Backwards compatibility could perhaps be addressed with a configuration option switch. I created a Jira issue for this: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-188 Thoughts? Stephen

1 0

XWiki Developers Release
by Ludovic Dubost 27 Oct '05

27 Oct '05

Here is a status on the development towards the next release, which should be the one of the very last release before 1.0. The following major feature have been added to the current SVN version Thanks to the Summer of Code we have now - a WYSIWYG Editor - a Chart Wizard - a new Query Language Additionnally we have: - a new title field and different rendering of document names in links and in the header - a backlinks feature (activated using xwiki.backlinks=1 in xwiki.cfg) - a custom mapping feature allowing to store XWiki Objects in flat tables for advanced developments - new storage of XWiki classes definition in the xwikidoc table instead of multiple tables - the XWiki Preferences now use a custom mapping for better performance - lot's of bug fixes, incl. access through proxies, issues with the multilingual feature - an import/export API (for backups and for XWiki applications) which is needed for the Import/Export XWiki page - improvements to the URL scheme which will allow to reduce the number of elements in the xwiki URLs (currently some XWiki features still need xwiki to run on the /xwiki/ path) These are a lot of new features which needs to be well tested before become fully usable. Most of the features can be deactivated or are backwards compatible. We would need some help from the XWiki community to test this new version and report any issues in JIRA ( http://jira.xwiki.org ). Except for the preferences storage and the xwiki classes definition storage, it is possible to revert to an older version even if running the new version. Now it is highly recommended to backup your database and test with care on production data. I'm planning to provide a test build for developers, but if you want to test right away, you will need to build XWiki from the SVN code. The plan for getting XWiki to 1.0 is: - bug fixing - bug fixing - documentation - very small missing features - bug fixing - documentation - revamp of the XWiki interface according to the Usability report done during the summer - bug fixing - documentation Any help or comments is welcome. For now it would be usefull to identify bugs that would absolutely need to be fixed before releasing this version to replace 0.9.840. The objective is to provide an improvement versus 0.9.840 and allow working with the new features, not necessarily to provide a perfect version. Thanks and happy testing Ludovic -- Ludovic Dubost XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/ Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic

4 3