[xwiki-users] evaluation questions: sorted document tree; XOO; other topics
hi - I'm one of the stranded former users of the free hosted service wik.is which mindtouch precipitously cancelled, forcing all users to either go to one of their paid plans (which don't match my usage), or leave. I'm going to host it myself this time, and have been looking through the alternatives. I'm attracted to xwiki for several reasons: full ACL support; ldap authentication; good open source license without a bunch of proprietary features; Balsamiq and Word integrations; wysiwyg editing; and strong REST api.
From my first glance I do still have some reservations:
1. One concern is convenient maintenance of sorted children. I see that in xwiki's own documentation wiki, this isn't done: http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/ is just maintained manually as an index page. As far as I can tell, by default children are just sorted by creation order. With the http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/DocumentTreePlugin they can instead be sorted by name. Lastly, there is http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/SortedDocumentTreePlugin But I really don't understand the instructions for "importing" a class to get an additional sortable attribute. Also I don't know if these plugins support sort order of spaces too, or not. Ideally, however it is done, when a page is created, the form would have not only the page title and parent title, but a place for an optional sort value. 2. I'd like to be able to export an entire space as a big PDF. I can't tell if this plugin will do that: http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Applications/PDFExportPanelApplication For example, suppose I wanted the whol xwiki AdminGuide as a single PDF, what would I do? 3. I'd like a real bare bones look -- even slimmer than Confluence or MediaWiki, and both of those are a little less cluttered than the Toucan skin. I'm not finding any example skins that are like that. 4. I like the idea of supporting office app clients. But it seems there is some clumsiness with XOffice specifying a parent: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XOFFICE-243 And I can't find any documentation on editing/creating content from OpenOffice and/or via any webdav client. Things like URL conventions, etc. This page http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/Architecture mentions XOO (Xwiki OpenOffice) but there is nothing else about it: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Search?text=XOO&wikinames=&space= 5. I might be blind but I can't find any documentation for the blogging support. 6. The page http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/ says "Components" are preferred over plugins but the link to "Components" goes nowhere. In general the documentation wiki is pretty confusing. The Enterprise docs link to basically all the same places as the platform docs. There seems to be a mixture of information that is years out of date and information about ideas not yet implemented. Sadly it is an example of the dangers of using a wiki :(. -mda
Hi! Mark D. Anderson wrote:
hi -
I'm one of the stranded former users of the free hosted service wik.is which mindtouch precipitously cancelled, forcing all users to either go to one of their paid plans (which don't match my usage), or leave.
I'm going to host it myself this time, and have been looking through the alternatives. I'm attracted to xwiki for several reasons: full ACL support; ldap authentication; good open source license without a bunch of proprietary features; Balsamiq and Word integrations; wysiwyg editing; and strong REST api.
From my first glance I do still have some reservations:
1. One concern is convenient maintenance of sorted children. I see that in xwiki's own documentation wiki, this isn't done: http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/ is just maintained manually as an index page.
As far as I can tell, by default children are just sorted by creation order. With the http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/DocumentTreePlugin they can instead be sorted by name. Lastly, there is http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/SortedDocumentTreePlugin But I really don't understand the instructions for "importing" a class to get an additional sortable attribute.
Also I don't know if these plugins support sort order of spaces too, or not.
Ideally, however it is done, when a page is created, the form would have not only the page title and parent title, but a place for an optional sort value.
Without considering the available code, just to say that any single piece of information associated with a document can be used to programmatically display any bunch of selected documents in a new one. The homepage of a document is a clear field to be used as ID, but any identifiable content or object property could be used.
2. I'd like to be able to export an entire space as a big PDF. I can't tell if this plugin will do that: http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Applications/PDFExportPanelApplication For example, suppose I wanted the whol xwiki AdminGuide as a single PDF, what would I do?
To the best of my knowledge, this is not possible with the available plugins or applications. You can export as PDF a document, but not space or any other "artefact" you could create as a multi-chapter document metaphor. This nice application eases the use of some features related with document export. I would keep track of the development of nested spaces features and some other initiatives to add new hierarchy to XWiki documents. Also, an understanding of the new rendering architecture will be required to get something working on this field... http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Modules/RenderingModule
3. I'd like a real bare bones look -- even slimmer than Confluence or MediaWiki, and both of those are a little less cluttered than the Toucan skin. I'm not finding any example skins that are like that.
This is really easy. Check this thread... http://markmail.org/thread/n5i7mammmo63dcz6 As Vincent said, check some samples here... http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Screenshots
4. I like the idea of supporting office app clients. But it seems there is some clumsiness with XOffice specifying a parent: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XOFFICE-243 And I can't find any documentation on editing/creating content from OpenOffice and/or via any webdav client. Things like URL conventions, etc. This page http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/Architecture mentions XOO (Xwiki OpenOffice) but there is nothing else about it: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Search?text=XOO&wikinames=&space=
5. I might be blind but I can't find any documentation for the blogging support.
http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Applications/BlogApplication
6. The page http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/ says "Components" are preferred over plugins but the link to "Components" goes nowhere.
http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Modules/ComponentModule
In general the documentation wiki is pretty confusing. The Enterprise docs link to basically all the same places as the platform docs. There seems to be a mixture of information that is years out of date and information about ideas not yet implemented. Sadly it is an example of the dangers of using a wiki :(.
-mda
Well, I could agree with you and I can also feel the same danger of using a wiki you are speaking about. The point is that XWiki is a collaborative initiative. Developers are mostly devoted to develop (sic) new great features and it could be truth that the documentation is a bit messy. But I'm sure, better I can confirm, that any initiative/idea will be welcome and carefully considered for the community. Mainly, for the developers themselves. Please, browse through users lists and Jira repository to check how many times several aspects related with documentation have been discussed. Even some proposals about ideas like "bug fixing day" or "documentation day" (sorry, I don't remember if they were called exactly that way!) XWiki is a great framework requiring men/women work force to improve some aspects. Documentation is one of them!
_______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
HTH! Ricardo -- Ricardo RodrÃguez CTO eBioTIC. Life Sciences, Data Modeling and Information Management Systems
Hi Mark, see below On Dec 6, 2010, at 11:52 AM, Ricardo Rodriguez [eBioTIC.] wrote:
Hi!
Mark D. Anderson wrote:
hi -
I'm one of the stranded former users of the free hosted service wik.is which mindtouch precipitously cancelled, forcing all users to either go to one of their paid plans (which don't match my usage), or leave.
I'm going to host it myself this time, and have been looking through the alternatives. I'm attracted to xwiki for several reasons: full ACL support; ldap authentication; good open source license without a bunch of proprietary features; Balsamiq and Word integrations; wysiwyg editing; and strong REST api.
From my first glance I do still have some reservations:
1. One concern is convenient maintenance of sorted children. I see that in xwiki's own documentation wiki, this isn't done: http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/ is just maintained manually as an index page.
As far as I can tell, by default children are just sorted by creation order. With the http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/DocumentTreePlugin they can instead be sorted by name. Lastly, there is http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/SortedDocumentTreePlugin But I really don't understand the instructions for "importing" a class to get an additional sortable attribute.
Also I don't know if these plugins support sort order of spaces too, or not.
Ideally, however it is done, when a page is created, the form would have not only the page title and parent title, but a place for an optional sort value.
Without considering the available code, just to say that any single piece of information associated with a document can be used to programmatically display any bunch of selected documents in a new one. The homepage of a document is a clear field to be used as ID, but any identifiable content or object property could be used.
2. I'd like to be able to export an entire space as a big PDF. I can't tell if this plugin will do that: http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Applications/PDFExportPanelApplication For example, suppose I wanted the whol xwiki AdminGuide as a single PDF, what would I do?
To the best of my knowledge, this is not possible with the available plugins or applications.
It's possible to some degree by passing params in the URL, see: http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/Exports
You can export as PDF a document, but not space or any other "artefact" you could create as a multi-chapter document metaphor. This nice application eases the use of some features related with document export.
There's a work in progress to add a UI for multipage export, see the following: http://incubator.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Improvements/MultiExport Thanks -Vincent
I would keep track of the development of nested spaces features and some other initiatives to add new hierarchy to XWiki documents. Also, an understanding of the new rendering architecture will be required to get something working on this field...
http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Modules/RenderingModule
3. I'd like a real bare bones look -- even slimmer than Confluence or MediaWiki, and both of those are a little less cluttered than the Toucan skin. I'm not finding any example skins that are like that.
This is really easy. Check this thread...
http://markmail.org/thread/n5i7mammmo63dcz6
As Vincent said, check some samples here...
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Screenshots
4. I like the idea of supporting office app clients. But it seems there is some clumsiness with XOffice specifying a parent: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XOFFICE-243 And I can't find any documentation on editing/creating content from OpenOffice and/or via any webdav client. Things like URL conventions, etc. This page http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/Architecture mentions XOO (Xwiki OpenOffice) but there is nothing else about it: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Search?text=XOO&wikinames=&space=
5. I might be blind but I can't find any documentation for the blogging support.
http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Applications/BlogApplication
6. The page http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/ says "Components" are preferred over plugins but the link to "Components" goes nowhere.
http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Modules/ComponentModule
In general the documentation wiki is pretty confusing. The Enterprise docs link to basically all the same places as the platform docs. There seems to be a mixture of information that is years out of date and information about ideas not yet implemented. Sadly it is an example of the dangers of using a wiki :(.
-mda
Well, I could agree with you and I can also feel the same danger of using a wiki you are speaking about. The point is that XWiki is a collaborative initiative. Developers are mostly devoted to develop (sic) new great features and it could be truth that the documentation is a bit messy. But I'm sure, better I can confirm, that any initiative/idea will be welcome and carefully considered for the community. Mainly, for the developers themselves. Please, browse through users lists and Jira repository to check how many times several aspects related with documentation have been discussed. Even some proposals about ideas like "bug fixing day" or "documentation day" (sorry, I don't remember if they were called exactly that way!)
XWiki is a great framework requiring men/women work force to improve some aspects. Documentation is one of them!
Thanks Ricardo and Vincent. I think I have some answer on my questions except this one:
4. I like the idea of supporting office app clients. But it seems there is some clumsiness with XOffice specifying a parent: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XOFFICE-243 And I can't find any documentation on editing/creating content from OpenOffice and/or via any webdav client. Things like URL conventions, etc. This page http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/Architecture mentions XOO (Xwiki OpenOffice) but there is nothing else about it: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Search?text=XOO&wikinames=&space=
also, http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/SortedDocumentTreePlugin says: use imported class (section Installation step 3) called XWiki.SortedTreePageClass where can i read what that means? (what is importing a class?) btw, it occurs to me that the support for section editing makes it viable to use longer pages, which will help with both page ordering and with export to PDF. -mda
Mark D. Anderson wrote:
Thanks Ricardo and Vincent.
I think I have some answer on my questions except this one:
4. I like the idea of supporting office app clients. But it seems there is some clumsiness with XOffice specifying a parent: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XOFFICE-243
Well, this is clearly an open issue! :-)
And I can't find any documentation on editing/creating content from OpenOffice and/or via any webdav client. Things like URL conventions, etc. This page http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/Architecture mentions XOO (Xwiki OpenOffice) but there is nothing else about it: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Search?text=XOO&wikinames=&space=
Please, check this... http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Search?text=OpenOffice&x=0&y=0 and this... http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Applications/OfficeImporterApplication
also, http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/SortedDocumentTreePlugin says: use imported class (section Installation step 3) called XWiki.SortedTreePageClass where can i read what that means? (what is importing a class?)
It is rather important to get at least an intuitive idea about what XWiki Classes, Objects and Properties do mean. Please, check this: http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/DataModel It won't be possible to unveil the power of XWiki without a clear understanding of what these concepts mean and how are implemented within XWiki. In the case of the Sorted Document Tree Plugin, the piece of information used to weight a document could be either add an instance of the XWiki.TagClass class, or the XWiki.SortedTreePageClass class imported with the xar file of the application. How to instantiate a class? 1. Generally: Edit > Objects ; select the class and click ADD. You can edit the value of any property by clicking the small pencil in the right side. 2. To add a tag, follow the general procedure by selecting XWiki.TagClass or simply click the plus symbol in the bottom of the document. To the left, in the same line including author and date.
btw, it occurs to me that the support for section editing makes it viable to use longer pages, which will help with both page ordering and with export to PDF.
Great to read this. There are a lot of work done in new procedures to avoid edition conflicts. Some devs are currently considering to improve lock to section level.
-mda _______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Hope this helps to soften your XWiki learning curve! -- Ricardo RodrÃguez CTO eBioTIC. Life Sciences, Data Modeling and Information Management Systems
Hello Mark, On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 8:54 PM, Mark D. Anderson <mda@discerning.com> wrote:
Thanks Ricardo and Vincent.
I think I have some answer on my questions except this one:
4. I like the idea of supporting office app clients. But it seems there is some clumsiness with XOffice specifying a parent: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XOFFICE-243 And I can't find any documentation on editing/creating content from OpenOffice and/or via any webdav client.
For the WebDAV integration please refer to http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/WebDAV Bye, Jerome Things like URL conventions, etc.
This page http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/Architecture mentions XOO (Xwiki OpenOffice) but there is nothing else about it:
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Search?text=XOO&wikinames=&space=
also, http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Plugins/SortedDocumentTreePlugin says: use imported class (section Installation step 3) called XWiki.SortedTreePageClass where can i read what that means? (what is importing a class?)
btw, it occurs to me that the support for section editing makes it viable to use longer pages, which will help with both page ordering and with export to PDF.
-mda _______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
participants (4)
-
Jerome Velociter -
Mark D. Anderson -
Ricardo Rodriguez [eBioTIC.] -
Vincent Massol