[xwiki-users] [Proposal] Comparing XWiki to MediaWiki and Confluence on xwiki.org
Hi, Since we had users asking on the IRC what are the differences between XWiki and other solutions, it would be a good idea to provide such pages on the website: - XWiki and MediaWiki http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-MediaWiki - XWiki and Confluence http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence It would be great to know if you agree with the listed content and if you find other similarities or distinctions between the above solutions. Additionally, what other solutions would you be interested in seeing comparison with? Thanks, Caty
Hi Caty,
On 13 May 2016, at 17:05, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <valicac@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
Since we had users asking on the IRC what are the differences between XWiki and other solutions, it would be a good idea to provide such pages on the website:
- XWiki and MediaWiki http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-MediaWiki
- XWiki and Confluence http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence
It would be great to know if you agree with the listed content and if you find other similarities or distinctions between the above solutions.
+1, I think those are 2 well know wiki solutions and it’s interesting to know how XWiki compares to them. FTR Gregory Gueneau had started something like this a very long time ago but we never finalised it: http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki+competitors I haven’t fully read the 2 pages yet but form what I’ve seen so far, it looks of good quality. There are some little stuff to improve here and there but we can do that easily.
Additionally, what other solutions would you be interested in seeing comparison with?
I think it’s already good to start with. Thanks -Vincent
Thanks, Caty
+1, they looks good On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 5:05 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <valicac@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
Since we had users asking on the IRC what are the differences between XWiki and other solutions, it would be a good idea to provide such pages on the website:
- XWiki and MediaWiki http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-MediaWiki
- XWiki and Confluence http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence
It would be great to know if you agree with the listed content and if you find other similarities or distinctions between the above solutions.
Additionally, what other solutions would you be interested in seeing comparison with?
I think having Dokuwiki would be nice since it's often one of the first used wiki in Open Source.
Thanks, Caty _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
-- Thomas Mortagne
Any way to make it look better? Why are the features with a name before in each column? Also, the "Source: Wikimatrix" statement is not clearly attached to the section above it or below it. If there are extra softwares to aim at, would it make sense to add SharePoint, Office365 and Google Apps? Paul
It would be great to know if you agree with the listed content and if you find other similarities or distinctions between the above solutions.
I notice under extras it indicates: Ticket system: plugin I looked around and searched the extensions but I couldn't find this feature. Am I missing something? Regards, Jesse
On May 13, 2016, at 8:05 AM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <valicac@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
Since we had users asking on the IRC what are the differences between XWiki and other solutions, it would be a good idea to provide such pages on the website:
- XWiki and MediaWiki http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-MediaWiki
- XWiki and Confluence http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence
It would be great to know if you agree with the listed content and if you find other similarities or distinctions between the above solutions.
Additionally, what other solutions would you be interested in seeing comparison with?
Thanks, Caty _______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Useful comparisons, but I wasn't sure who the expected reader would be. The XWiki vs Confluence comparison feels rather biased so wouldn't be very helpful to someone trying to make a rational decision. The table makes them seem identical (perhaps it would be useful to highlight the actual differences) aside from license. Both are listed as having a ticketing plugin, but last time I checked (admittedly over a year ago) I couldn't find a robust plugin anywhere close to Confluence's offerings. The extensions in XWiki really vary in quality, whereas Confluence has a lot of very polished plugins. That's at least been my experience, and I think there's a need to distinguish between high-quality maintained extensions vs. the more hacky ones. The lack of a markup editor in Confluence is a big difference. Might be worth illustrating further. I think the page hierarchy model is rather difference. Confluence makes chaining of child pages very easy, and access restrictions to child pages is simple to manage. XWiki was a bit clunky by comparison, but that was for 7.1 and maybe the addition of sub-spaces in more recent versions makes this easier to manage. The other big difference, to me, is in documentation. XWiki has changed a lot over the years, particularly in the API, and a lot of the material discoverable on the web is out of date. My perception is that Confluence's API has been more stable over successive releases and more effort has been invested in keeping documentation up to date. Much of this difference is just a natural outcome of the proprietary vs. open source backgrounds of each system.
-----Original Message----- From: Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) [mailto:valicac@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, 14 May 2016 1:05 AM To: XWiki Mailinglist; XWiki Mailinglist Subject: [xwiki-users] [Proposal] Comparing XWiki to MediaWiki and Confluence on xwiki.org
Hi,
Since we had users asking on the IRC what are the differences between XWiki and other solutions, it would be a good idea to provide such pages on the website:
- XWiki and MediaWiki http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-MediaWiki
- XWiki and Confluence http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence
It would be great to know if you agree with the listed content and if you find other similarities or distinctions between the above solutions.
Additionally, what other solutions would you be interested in seeing comparison with?
Thanks, Caty
Hi, I’ve spoken with Caty and I’d like to explain a bit more this idea. The goal is to “market” XWiki as the best alternative to Confluence or MediaWiki on the home page, in a carousel slide. Those are two very well known wikis and we think it’s interesting to position XWiki as alternatives to them and have the 2 pages proposed by Caty to explain why XWiki is a good alternative. Here’s the current text: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Carousel/Section4 Any idea/feedback is welcome. Thanks -Vincent
On 13 May 2016, at 17:05, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <valicac@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
Since we had users asking on the IRC what are the differences between XWiki and other solutions, it would be a good idea to provide such pages on the website:
- XWiki and MediaWiki http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-MediaWiki
- XWiki and Confluence http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence
It would be great to know if you agree with the listed content and if you find other similarities or distinctions between the above solutions.
Additionally, what other solutions would you be interested in seeing comparison with?
Thanks, Caty
Hi Bryn, Thanks for your feedback, lots of good points. See below for a point by point comment.
On 14 May 2016, at 00:47, Bryn Jeffries <bryn.jeffries@sydney.edu.au> wrote:
Useful comparisons, but I wasn't sure who the expected reader would be.
I’ve just sent another email explaining more the context and the reason for this initiative.
The XWiki vs Confluence comparison feels rather biased so wouldn't be very helpful to someone trying to make a rational decision.
The goal is of course to be as unbiased as possible although it’s never fully possible to do so. At least we need to find out the parts that are not correct and remove them or word them better. The goal is to highlight the strengths of XWiki vs Confluence and MediaWiki.
The table makes them seem identical (perhaps it would be useful to highlight the actual differences) aside from license.
I agree that I’m not sure we need to list the stuff that are similar and maybe it would be better to only mention the differences. Now that said, I think the idea is also for neophytes to wikis to be able to understand this page. We need to decide which we wish to have.
Both are listed as having a ticketing plugin, but last time I checked (admittedly over a year ago) I couldn't find a robust plugin anywhere close to Confluence's offerings.
You seem to be knowing Confluence which is great, since it’s been more than 10 years that I haven’t used it myself. Indeed, I don’t know why there’s this "Ticket plugin” mentioned. I’ll check with Caty. XWiki certainly doesn’t have a full ticket extension right now AFAIK. The closest I can think of is the Task Application: http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Task+Manager+Applicatio...
The extensions in XWiki really vary in quality, whereas Confluence has a lot of very polished plugins. That's at least been my experience, and I think there's a need to distinguish between high-quality maintained extensions vs. the more hacky ones.
Definitely. I’ve also discussed this with others and it’s time that we start curating extensions and introduce some “Editor Picks” or “Recommended” extensions. I’ll start this in another thread real soon.
The lack of a markup editor in Confluence is a big difference. Might be worth illustrating further.
Agreed. Maybe the polyglotism too (ability to use various markup syntaxes).
I think the page hierarchy model is rather difference. Confluence makes chaining of child pages very easy, and access restrictions to child pages is simple to manage. XWiki was a bit clunky by comparison, but that was for 7.1 and maybe the addition of sub-spaces in more recent versions makes this easier to manage.
Could you explain why it’s simpler with Confluence by comparison with, say, XWiki 7.4.3? I think this now at least as easy if not more now. Same for access restrictions to children pages. See http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ContentOrganization
The other big difference, to me, is in documentation. XWiki has changed a lot over the years, particularly in the API,
This is not fully correct. A lot of new APIs have been introduced, showing the dynamism of the XWiki community indeed. However, we take very seriously backward-compatibility (so seriously that breaking it fails our build automatically ;)). So all that worked are still supposed to work. Do you have an example that you’ve noticed where it’s not true (it can happen from time to time when we conscientiously decide to break a recent API that we think nobody uses) .
and a lot of the material discoverable on the web is out of date.
Any example? That would help to fix them.
My perception is that Confluence's API has been more stable over successive releases and more effort has been invested in keeping documentation up to date.
It’s certainly true that we need to improve on dev documentation (the user doc is probably ok but the dev one can be improved).
Much of this difference is just a natural outcome of the proprietary vs. open source backgrounds of each system.
Well our goal is to be open source and still be good on all fronts! :) Re Confluence, they have lots of people working on the doc vs XWiki where it’s the developers doing it, so it’s more a question of manpower than of proprietary vs open source IMO. What’s interesting though XWiki is a smaller team, we’re still progressing and innovative at least as fast (if not more) as Confluence IMO. Lots of people have commented that they prefer XWiki over Confluence. Some quotes are on https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/References/Testimonials Anyway, let’s focus on editing this comparison page to make it as accurate as possible. Keep the comments coming and feel free to edit the doc too if you wish. Thanks -Vincent
-----Original Message-----
From: Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) [mailto:valicac@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, 14 May 2016 1:05 AM To: XWiki Mailinglist; XWiki Mailinglist Subject: [xwiki-users] [Proposal] Comparing XWiki to MediaWiki and Confluence on xwiki.org
Hi,
Since we had users asking on the IRC what are the differences between XWiki and other solutions, it would be a good idea to provide such pages on the website:
- XWiki and MediaWiki http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-MediaWiki
- XWiki and Confluence http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence
It would be great to know if you agree with the listed content and if you find other similarities or distinctions between the above solutions.
Additionally, what other solutions would you be interested in seeing comparison with?
Thanks, Caty
Vincent wrote:
You seem to be knowing Confluence which is great, since it’s been more than 10 years that I haven’t used it myself.
It's been a few years for me also, but I suspect many of the good features present then are still the most noticeable.
Indeed, I don’t know why there’s this "Ticket plugin” mentioned. I’ll check with Caty. XWiki certainly doesn’t have a full ticket extension right now AFAIK. The closest I can think of is the Task Application: http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Task+Manager+Appli cation
Yes, I looked into this but it felt like a proof of principle rather than an actively used and maintained product. I ended up going with the Redmine plugin instead for a while, but it wasn't anything near Jira.
The extensions in XWiki really vary in quality, whereas Confluence has a lot of very polished plugins. That's at least been my experience, and I think there's a need to distinguish between high-quality maintained extensions vs. the more hacky ones.
Definitely. I’ve also discussed this with others and it’s time that we start curating extensions and introduce some “Editor Picks” or “Recommended” extensions. I’ll start this in another thread real soon.
I think this is a smart move. A decent set of flagship plugins could really set the standard for others. Also, if you're competing with Confluence, it's important to keep in mind that it's not just a wiki. The appeal of Confluence is that it's a great wiki with excellent integration with Atlassian's other (also great) products like Jira and source code repositories. To appeal to the same audience you really need to have a strong ecosystem built around the XWiki platform.
The lack of a markup editor in Confluence is a big difference. Might be worth illustrating further.
Agreed. Maybe the polyglotism too (ability to use various markup syntaxes).
Maybe. Sometimes too much choice can be a bad thing. A single really good markup language is better that multiple similar ones. But being able to port easily from other systems with different markups is certainly a good thing. On several occasions I've found myself investing time writing content in one system, and then years later being unable to move to better platforms because the markup languages are incompatible and not having the time to port things over manually.
I think the page hierarchy model is rather difference. Confluence makes chaining of child pages very easy, and access restrictions to child pages is simple to manage. XWiki was a bit clunky by comparison, but that was for 7.1 and maybe the addition of sub-spaces in more recent versions makes this easier to manage.
Could you explain why it’s simpler with Confluence by comparison with, say, XWiki 7.4.3? I think this now at least as easy if not more now. Same for access restrictions to children pages.
See http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ContentOrganization
This is a new feature that I haven't tried yet - I'm running a 7.1.1 and 7.1.2 system. I look forward to upgrading and trying this out soon.
The other big difference, to me, is in documentation. XWiki has changed a lot over the years, particularly in the API,
This is not fully correct. A lot of new APIs have been introduced, showing the dynamism of the XWiki community indeed. However, we take very seriously backward-compatibility (so seriously that breaking it fails our build automatically ;)). So all that worked are still supposed to work. Do you have an example that you’ve noticed where it’s not true (it can happen from time to time when we conscientiously decide to break a recent API that we think nobody uses) .
Again, I may be out of date here. I've really struggled to get the API documentation for 7.1. I see that things have been cleaned up a lot at http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/API but the APIs still seem to be missing for versions between 5.0 and 7.4.3. Obviously the solution for me now would be to upgrade.
and a lot of the material discoverable on the web is out of date.
Any example? That would help to fix them.
Again this may be historical rather than present day. I'll certainly yell if I encounter examples in the future. When I first set about writing a component I googled around for examples and much of that was for the older plugin architecture, and I was too new to things to appreciate the difference. I think the API was also in a state of transition at the time, so properties available through the wiki context required awkward bridging classes that didn't make sense to noobs such as me. Incidentally, I think it could still be easier to write extensions for XWiki. Writing Groovy components within XWiki pages is neat, but (at least in 7.1) they don't work until someone manually visits the page a first time. This means some components stop working when the system is restarted. It also lacks access to a decent IDE interface to aide writing code - sometimes I end up copying and pasting between the wiki editor and Notepad++ so that I can get code formatting and syntax highlighting.
Much of this difference is just a natural outcome of the proprietary vs. open source backgrounds of each system.
Well our goal is to be open source and still be good on all fronts! :)
That's an admirable goal, and a formidable undertaking. Good luck! You've certainly got an impressive product.
On 2016-05-14 14:47, Vincent Massol wrote:
The extensions in XWiki really vary in quality, whereas Confluence has a lot of very polished plugins. That's at least been my experience, and I think there's a need to distinguish between high-quality maintained extensions vs. the more hacky ones. Definitely. I’ve also discussed this with others and it’s time that we start curating extensions and introduce some “Editor Picks” or “Recommended” extensions. I’ll start this in another thread real soon.
I think, that first simple step to improve extensions could be improving info about creating issues regarding extension. I recently tried to create one following link from standard extension homepage and didn't make to create it in right place. Cheers, R.
Hi Bryn, Thanks again, see below.
On 16 May 2016, at 00:40, Bryn Jeffries <bryn.jeffries@sydney.edu.au> wrote:
Vincent wrote:
You seem to be knowing Confluence which is great, since it’s been more than 10 years that I haven’t used it myself.
It's been a few years for me also, but I suspect many of the good features present then are still the most noticeable.
Indeed, I don’t know why there’s this "Ticket plugin” mentioned. I’ll check with Caty. XWiki certainly doesn’t have a full ticket extension right now AFAIK. The closest I can think of is the Task Application: http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Task+Manager+Appli cation
Yes, I looked into this but it felt like a proof of principle rather than an actively used and maintained product. I ended up going with the Redmine plugin instead for a while, but it wasn't anything near Jira.
Yes, it could have some more love for sure ;) However, it’s supposed to be usable and it’s not competing with dedicated products such as redmine, jira, etc. Dedicated products will always be better. The goal is that if your needs are small, you can instal this extension and it’ll do the job and you don’t need to install another product. What we should be doing is integrate with external issue trackers. Regarding JIRA for example, we have strong integration with it using our JIRA macro our our JIRA scripting API.
The extensions in XWiki really vary in quality, whereas Confluence has a lot
of very polished plugins. That's at least been my experience, and I think there's a need to distinguish between high-quality maintained extensions vs. the more hacky ones.
Definitely. I’ve also discussed this with others and it’s time that we start curating extensions and introduce some “Editor Picks” or “Recommended” extensions. I’ll start this in another thread real soon.
I think this is a smart move. A decent set of flagship plugins could really set the standard for others.
Also, if you're competing with Confluence, it's important to keep in mind that it's not just a wiki. The appeal of Confluence is that it's a great wiki with excellent integration with Atlassian's other (also great) products like Jira and source code repositories. To appeal to the same audience you really need to have a strong ecosystem built around the XWiki platform.
There’s a difference here. XWiki’s goal is not to compete on the developer spectrum but more on the general business one, see http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence#HIntermsofmar... Now, I personally think that XWiki should have a great appeal to devs since it’s full programmable and scriptable.
The lack of a markup editor in Confluence is a big difference. Might be
worth illustrating further.
Agreed. Maybe the polyglotism too (ability to use various markup syntaxes).
Maybe. Sometimes too much choice can be a bad thing. A single really good markup language is better that multiple similar ones. But being able to port easily from other systems with different markups is certainly a good thing. On several occasions I've found myself investing time writing content in one system, and then years later being unable to move to better platforms because the markup languages are incompatible and not having the time to port things over manually.
I think the page hierarchy model is rather difference. Confluence makes chaining of child pages very easy, and access restrictions to child pages is simple to manage. XWiki was a bit clunky by comparison, but that was for 7.1 and maybe the addition of sub-spaces in more recent versions makes this easier to manage.
Could you explain why it’s simpler with Confluence by comparison with, say, XWiki 7.4.3? I think this now at least as easy if not more now. Same for access restrictions to children pages.
See http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ContentOrganization
This is a new feature that I haven't tried yet - I'm running a 7.1.1 and 7.1.2 system. I look forward to upgrading and trying this out soon.
I’m eager to get your feedback on this!
The other big difference, to me, is in documentation. XWiki has
changed a lot over the years, particularly in the API,
This is not fully correct. A lot of new APIs have been introduced, showing the dynamism of the XWiki community indeed. However, we take very seriously backward-compatibility (so seriously that breaking it fails our build automatically ;)). So all that worked are still supposed to work. Do you have an example that you’ve noticed where it’s not true (it can happen from time to time when we conscientiously decide to break a recent API that we think nobody uses) .
Again, I may be out of date here. I've really struggled to get the API documentation for 7.1. I see that things have been cleaned up a lot at http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/API but the APIs still seem to be missing for versions between 5.0 and 7.4.3. Obviously the solution for me now would be to upgrade.
Yes, we only maintain documentation for the latest version of XWiki on xwiki.org (not enough manpower to have decent doc for several versions ATM).
and a lot of the material discoverable on the web is out of date.
Any example? That would help to fix them.
Again this may be historical rather than present day. I'll certainly yell if I encounter examples in the future. When I first set about writing a component I googled around for examples and much of that was for the older plugin architecture, and I was too new to things to appreciate the difference. I think the API was also in a state of transition at the time, so properties available through the wiki context required awkward bridging classes that didn't make sense to noobs such as me.
Incidentally, I think it could still be easier to write extensions for XWiki. Writing Groovy components within XWiki pages is neat, but (at least in 7.1) they don't work until someone manually visits the page a first time. This means some components stop working when the system is restarted. It also lacks access to a decent IDE interface to aide writing code - sometimes I end up copying and pasting between the wiki editor and Notepad++ so that I can get code formatting and syntax highlighting.
They do always work actually, even when restarting. The issue is that if you write in Groovy for example, you need Programming Rights (PR) since the language can access anything, including the file system and more. You give PR to a page when a user with PR saves it. And you loose PR when a user without PR saves the page. So the page will work till someone without PR saves it. To circumvent this, pages requiring PR could be right-protected so that only user with PR can edit them for example. EDIT: I think you actually meant writing a groovy script to register some code as a component. Actually we have wiki components for that: http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/WikiComponent+Module
Much of this difference is just a natural outcome of the proprietary vs.
open source backgrounds of each system.
Well our goal is to be open source and still be good on all fronts! :)
That's an admirable goal, and a formidable undertaking. Good luck! You've certainly got an impressive product.
Keep the feedback coming! Even the bad one, we need to learn what we should improve. Thanks! -Vincent
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Vincent Massol <vincent@massol.net> wrote:
Hi Bryn,
Thanks again, see below.
On 16 May 2016, at 00:40, Bryn Jeffries <bryn.jeffries@sydney.edu.au> wrote:
Vincent wrote:
You seem to be knowing Confluence which is great, since it’s been more than 10 years that I haven’t used it myself.
It's been a few years for me also, but I suspect many of the good features present then are still the most noticeable.
Indeed, I don’t know why there’s this "Ticket plugin” mentioned. I’ll check with Caty. XWiki certainly doesn’t have a full ticket extension right now AFAIK. The closest I can think of is the Task Application: http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Task+Manager+Appli cation
Yes, I looked into this but it felt like a proof of principle rather than an actively used and maintained product. I ended up going with the Redmine plugin instead for a while, but it wasn't anything near Jira.
Yes, it could have some more love for sure ;) However, it’s supposed to be usable and it’s not competing with dedicated products such as redmine, jira, etc. Dedicated products will always be better. The goal is that if your needs are small, you can instal this extension and it’ll do the job and you don’t need to install another product.
What we should be doing is integrate with external issue trackers.
Regarding JIRA for example, we have strong integration with it using our JIRA macro our our JIRA scripting API.
The extensions in XWiki really vary in quality, whereas Confluence has a lot
of very polished plugins. That's at least been my experience, and I think there's a need to distinguish between high-quality maintained extensions vs. the more hacky ones.
Definitely. I’ve also discussed this with others and it’s time that we start curating extensions and introduce some “Editor Picks” or “Recommended” extensions. I’ll start this in another thread real soon.
I think this is a smart move. A decent set of flagship plugins could really set the standard for others.
Also, if you're competing with Confluence, it's important to keep in mind that it's not just a wiki. The appeal of Confluence is that it's a great wiki with excellent integration with Atlassian's other (also great) products like Jira and source code repositories. To appeal to the same audience you really need to have a strong ecosystem built around the XWiki platform.
There’s a difference here. XWiki’s goal is not to compete on the developer spectrum but more on the general business one, see http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence#HIntermsofmar...
Now, I personally think that XWiki should have a great appeal to devs since it’s full programmable and scriptable.
The lack of a markup editor in Confluence is a big difference. Might be
worth illustrating further.
Agreed. Maybe the polyglotism too (ability to use various markup syntaxes).
Maybe. Sometimes too much choice can be a bad thing. A single really good markup language is better that multiple similar ones. But being able to port easily from other systems with different markups is certainly a good thing. On several occasions I've found myself investing time writing content in one system, and then years later being unable to move to better platforms because the markup languages are incompatible and not having the time to port things over manually.
I think the page hierarchy model is rather difference. Confluence makes chaining of child pages very easy, and access restrictions to child
pages is
simple to manage. XWiki was a bit clunky by comparison, but that was for 7.1 and maybe the addition of sub-spaces in more recent versions makes this easier to manage.
Could you explain why it’s simpler with Confluence by comparison with, say, XWiki 7.4.3? I think this now at least as easy if not more now. Same for access restrictions to children pages.
See http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ContentOrganization
This is a new feature that I haven't tried yet - I'm running a 7.1.1 and 7.1.2 system. I look forward to upgrading and trying this out soon.
I’m eager to get your feedback on this!
The other big difference, to me, is in documentation. XWiki has
changed a lot over the years, particularly in the API,
This is not fully correct. A lot of new APIs have been introduced, showing the dynamism of the XWiki community indeed. However, we take very seriously backward-compatibility (so seriously that breaking it fails our build automatically ;)). So all that worked are still supposed to work. Do you have an example that you’ve noticed where it’s not true (it can happen from time to time when we conscientiously decide to break a recent API that we think nobody uses) .
Again, I may be out of date here. I've really struggled to get the API documentation for 7.1. I see that things have been cleaned up a lot at http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/API but the APIs still seem to be missing for versions between 5.0 and 7.4.3. Obviously the solution for me now would be to upgrade.
Yes, we only maintain documentation for the latest version of XWiki on xwiki.org (not enough manpower to have decent doc for several versions ATM).
However, for version 6.2.5 and later, you have a way to mitigate this limitation. You can install the Scripting Documentation Application on your own wiki (see http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Scripting+Documentation...). This application is dynamic, it searches and inspects bindings available to scripts in your running wiki, and provides direct access to the documentation of the corresponding Java class behind those bindings. Even scripting services added through custom extensions could be found and if these has been released on xwiki.org maven, their JavaDoc get linked as well.
and a lot of the material discoverable on the web is out of date.
Any example? That would help to fix them.
Again this may be historical rather than present day. I'll certainly yell if I encounter examples in the future. When I first set about writing a component I googled around for examples and much of that was for the older plugin architecture, and I was too new to things to appreciate the difference. I think the API was also in a state of transition at the time, so properties available through the wiki context required awkward bridging classes that didn't make sense to noobs such as me.
Incidentally, I think it could still be easier to write extensions for XWiki. Writing Groovy components within XWiki pages is neat, but (at least in 7.1) they don't work until someone manually visits the page a first time. This means some components stop working when the system is restarted. It also lacks access to a decent IDE interface to aide writing code - sometimes I end up copying and pasting between the wiki editor and Notepad++ so that I can get code formatting and syntax highlighting.
They do always work actually, even when restarting. The issue is that if you write in Groovy for example, you need Programming Rights (PR) since the language can access anything, including the file system and more. You give PR to a page when a user with PR saves it. And you loose PR when a user without PR saves the page. So the page will work till someone without PR saves it. To circumvent this, pages requiring PR could be right-protected so that only user with PR can edit them for example.
EDIT: I think you actually meant writing a groovy script to register some code as a component. Actually we have wiki components for that: http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/WikiComponent+Module
Unless you are using XWiki prior to 4.2 , using Wiki Component is definitely the recommended way to writes Groovy components. Registering components "by hand" from a groovy script has many drawbacks not only the restart one, and you should avoid doing that. The best is of course to write the components in Java, and install them as an extension.
Much of this difference is just a natural outcome of the proprietary vs.
open source backgrounds of each system.
Well our goal is to be open source and still be good on all fronts! :)
That's an admirable goal, and a formidable undertaking. Good luck! You've certainly got an impressive product.
Keep the feedback coming! Even the bad one, we need to learn what we should improve.
Thanks! -Vincent
_______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Thanks, -- Denis Gervalle SOFTEC sa - CEO
Denis Gervalle said:
Yes, we only maintain documentation for the latest version of XWiki on xwiki.org (not enough manpower to have decent doc for several versions ATM).
However, for version 6.2.5 and later, you have a way to mitigate this limitation. You can install the Scripting Documentation Application on your own wiki (see http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Scripting+Documenta tion+Application).
Thanks, I did not know about this tool, which sounds excellent.
Unless you are using XWiki prior to 4.2 , using Wiki Component is definitely the recommended way to writes Groovy components. Registering components "by hand" from a groovy script has many drawbacks not only the restart one, and you should avoid doing that. The best is of course to write the components in Java, and install them as an extension.
I've found the ability to write small Groovy scripts as components has been very handy and simpler than writing full extensions in Java. For utilities that I don't wish to make into public extensions the burden of a small Groovy script into a proper extension seems prohibitive (although that may just be that I haven't written one yet, and I'm just a walker at the bottom of a hill complaining about how high it looks...). Last time I asked there is was no simple way to install private extensions. Also, I didn't have much luck writing a proper component in Groovy, which I sometimes prefer to Java.
Hi, I finally got the time to make another iteration for these comparison pages. If anyone want to make modifications on the texts, they are available at: - http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/Compare/ - http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/Compare/XWiki-vs-Confluence/ - http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/Compare/XWiki-vs-MediaWiki/ They should look like: - Compare: http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Proposal/XWikiOrg2017/preview_Com... - XWiki vs. Confluence: http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Proposal/XWikiOrg2017/preview_Con... - XWiki vs. MediaWiki: http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Proposal/XWikiOrg2017/preview_Med... I'm curious to know what you think about this version in terms of layout, validate the content, maybe you have other points that we can compare the solutions on, maybe I wrote something wrong for the solutions. Let me know, Caty On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 11:17 PM, Bryn Jeffries <bryn.jeffries@sydney.edu.au
wrote:
Denis Gervalle said:
Yes, we only maintain documentation for the latest version of XWiki on xwiki.org (not enough manpower to have decent doc for several versions ATM).
However, for version 6.2.5 and later, you have a way to mitigate this limitation. You can install the Scripting Documentation Application on your own wiki (see http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Scripting+Documenta tion+Application).
Thanks, I did not know about this tool, which sounds excellent.
Unless you are using XWiki prior to 4.2 , using Wiki Component is definitely the recommended way to writes Groovy components. Registering components "by hand" from a groovy script has many drawbacks not only the restart one, and you should avoid doing that. The best is of course to write the components in Java, and install them as an extension.
I've found the ability to write small Groovy scripts as components has been very handy and simpler than writing full extensions in Java. For utilities that I don't wish to make into public extensions the burden of a small Groovy script into a proper extension seems prohibitive (although that may just be that I haven't written one yet, and I'm just a walker at the bottom of a hill complaining about how high it looks...). Last time I asked there is was no simple way to install private extensions. Also, I didn't have much luck writing a proper component in Groovy, which I sometimes prefer to Java. _______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Created Forum entry https://forum.xwiki.org/t/comparing-xwiki-to-mediawiki-and-confluence-on-xwi... Thanks, Caty On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 7:11 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) < valicac@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
I finally got the time to make another iteration for these comparison pages.
If anyone want to make modifications on the texts, they are available at: - http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/Compare/ - http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/Compare/XWiki-vs-Confluence/ - http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/Compare/XWiki-vs-MediaWiki/
They should look like: - Compare: http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Proposal/ XWikiOrg2017/preview_Compare.png - XWiki vs. Confluence: http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/ bin/download/Proposal/XWikiOrg2017/preview_Confluence.png - XWiki vs. MediaWiki: http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/ bin/download/Proposal/XWikiOrg2017/preview_MediaWiki.png
I'm curious to know what you think about this version in terms of layout, validate the content, maybe you have other points that we can compare the solutions on, maybe I wrote something wrong for the solutions.
Let me know, Caty
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 11:17 PM, Bryn Jeffries < bryn.jeffries@sydney.edu.au> wrote:
Denis Gervalle said:
Yes, we only maintain documentation for the latest version of XWiki on xwiki.org (not enough manpower to have decent doc for several versions ATM).
However, for version 6.2.5 and later, you have a way to mitigate this limitation. You can install the Scripting Documentation Application on your own wiki (see http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Scripti ng+Documenta tion+Application).
Thanks, I did not know about this tool, which sounds excellent.
Unless you are using XWiki prior to 4.2 , using Wiki Component is definitely the recommended way to writes Groovy components. Registering components "by hand" from a groovy script has many drawbacks not only the restart one, and you should avoid doing that. The best is of course to write the components in Java, and install them as an extension.
I've found the ability to write small Groovy scripts as components has been very handy and simpler than writing full extensions in Java. For utilities that I don't wish to make into public extensions the burden of a small Groovy script into a proper extension seems prohibitive (although that may just be that I haven't written one yet, and I'm just a walker at the bottom of a hill complaining about how high it looks...). Last time I asked there is was no simple way to install private extensions. Also, I didn't have much luck writing a proper component in Groovy, which I sometimes prefer to Java. _______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
participants (8)
-
Bryn Jeffries -
Denis Gervalle -
Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) -
Jesse Bright -
Paul Libbrecht -
Ryszard Łach -
Thomas Mortagne -
Vincent Massol