[xwiki-users] [Discussion] Make XWiki Case Insensitive. WDYT?
Hi users and devs, I would like to have your opinion on the topic of case sensitive vs case insensitive and which one you prefer in XWiki. Currently, XWiki is case sensitive. This means the same resource name (document name, space name, etc) can be written with either small letters or big letters or a mix. Examples: You can have both "Main.Test" and "Main.test" as 2 different documents. Also, you can have "XWiki.Admin" and "XWiki.admin" as 2 different users. This also applies to URLs, as "/Main/Test" is different from "/Main/test" or "/main/test", so all these 3 are different resources. Even from this short description, one can already identify possible problems of this approach.
From the top 3 operating systems (Linux, Mac an Windows), only Linux is case sensitive, the other two (more user-focused Operating Systems) are both case insensitive.
Since XWiki has one of its main targets the Enterprise users, it is safe to assume that the correct approach would be to also be more user-focused and simplify things and avoid confusions by being case insensitive as well. Also, a quick search on existing issues validates the need for this improvement: http://jira.xwiki.org/issues/?jql=text%20~%20%22case%20insensitive%22 What do you think? Is it OK to keep XWiki case sensitive, or would you prefer it case insensitive? Bring arguments. I have also created a jira issue for this idea: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-11412 to track it in the future. Thanks, Eduard
Hi Edy, thanks for your message. From a forward-looking standpoint, I 100% agree with you that switching XWiki to case-insensitive would be a good thing to do. I've seen others (as well as myself) be lost because they were going to .../xwiki/bin/view/Main/Xyy instead of .../xwiki/bin/view/Main/XYY and vice-versa. If we were to make the decision today, I can't see a good reason why not to go case-insensitive, especially when targeting business users. However we're not starting from a blank slate. There might be (I don't know that there is, but there might be) legitimate use cases for a page named "Xyy" vs a page named "XYY", both in the same wiki. I'd like to have a better idea of the consequences of this change, as well an analysis of a public site such as xwiki.org to see whether this could be causing unforeseen and other unexpected issues. In other words: what could go wrong? Thanks, Guillaume ᐧ On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Eduard Moraru <enygma2002@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi users and devs,
I would like to have your opinion on the topic of case sensitive vs case insensitive and which one you prefer in XWiki.
Currently, XWiki is case sensitive. This means the same resource name (document name, space name, etc) can be written with either small letters or big letters or a mix.
Examples: You can have both "Main.Test" and "Main.test" as 2 different documents. Also, you can have "XWiki.Admin" and "XWiki.admin" as 2 different users. This also applies to URLs, as "/Main/Test" is different from "/Main/test" or "/main/test", so all these 3 are different resources.
Even from this short description, one can already identify possible problems of this approach.
From the top 3 operating systems (Linux, Mac an Windows), only Linux is case sensitive, the other two (more user-focused Operating Systems) are both case insensitive.
Since XWiki has one of its main targets the Enterprise users, it is safe to assume that the correct approach would be to also be more user-focused and simplify things and avoid confusions by being case insensitive as well.
Also, a quick search on existing issues validates the need for this improvement: http://jira.xwiki.org/issues/?jql=text%20~%20%22case%20insensitive%22
What do you think? Is it OK to keep XWiki case sensitive, or would you prefer it case insensitive? Bring arguments.
I have also created a jira issue for this idea: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-11412 to track it in the future.
Thanks, Eduard _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
As far as I know, Mac can be either case sensitive or case insensitive (just need to choose how you format your disk)*. So we could do the same on XWiki and propose to choose between case sensitive and case insensitive at the installation (a variable in xwiki.properties)? I'm not against a case insentivity by default if I can switch it later. * I have a Mac at home and mine is case sensitive but I configured it 2 years ago. I don't know if, in the last 2 years, Apple decided to remove this choice between case sentivity and case insensitivity. On Fri, Nov 07, 2014 at 12:03:14PM +0100, Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
Hi Edy,
thanks for your message. From a forward-looking standpoint, I 100% agree with you that switching XWiki to case-insensitive would be a good thing to do. I've seen others (as well as myself) be lost because they were going to .../xwiki/bin/view/Main/Xyy instead of .../xwiki/bin/view/Main/XYY and vice-versa. If we were to make the decision today, I can't see a good reason why not to go case-insensitive, especially when targeting business users.
However we're not starting from a blank slate. There might be (I don't know that there is, but there might be) legitimate use cases for a page named "Xyy" vs a page named "XYY", both in the same wiki. I'd like to have a better idea of the consequences of this change, as well an analysis of a public site such as xwiki.org to see whether this could be causing unforeseen and other unexpected issues. In other words: what could go wrong?
Thanks,
Guillaume ᐧ
On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Eduard Moraru <enygma2002@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi users and devs,
I would like to have your opinion on the topic of case sensitive vs case insensitive and which one you prefer in XWiki.
Currently, XWiki is case sensitive. This means the same resource name (document name, space name, etc) can be written with either small letters or big letters or a mix.
Examples: You can have both "Main.Test" and "Main.test" as 2 different documents. Also, you can have "XWiki.Admin" and "XWiki.admin" as 2 different users. This also applies to URLs, as "/Main/Test" is different from "/Main/test" or "/main/test", so all these 3 are different resources.
Even from this short description, one can already identify possible problems of this approach.
From the top 3 operating systems (Linux, Mac an Windows), only Linux is case sensitive, the other two (more user-focused Operating Systems) are both case insensitive.
Since XWiki has one of its main targets the Enterprise users, it is safe to assume that the correct approach would be to also be more user-focused and simplify things and avoid confusions by being case insensitive as well.
Also, a quick search on existing issues validates the need for this improvement: http://jira.xwiki.org/issues/?jql=text%20~%20%22case%20insensitive%22
What do you think? Is it OK to keep XWiki case sensitive, or would you prefer it case insensitive? Bring arguments.
I have also created a jira issue for this idea: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-11412 to track it in the future.
Thanks, Eduard _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
-- Jean Simard jean.simard@xwiki.com Research engineer at XWiki SAS http://www.xwiki.com Committer on the XWiki.org project http://www.xwiki.org
Hi Guillaume, Here's a quick snippet for detecting such cases in your current wiki: http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Case+insensitive+docume... Use it to detect collisions/mistakes and to have a better understanding of the problem. It is also useful to better understand the impact, if any, on your wiki if we were to move to case insensitive only (i.e. see how many pages would present problems and would have to be fixed, either manually or automatically). Thanks, Eduard On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 1:03 PM, Guillaume Lerouge <guillaume@xwiki.com> wrote:
Hi Edy,
thanks for your message. From a forward-looking standpoint, I 100% agree with you that switching XWiki to case-insensitive would be a good thing to do. I've seen others (as well as myself) be lost because they were going to .../xwiki/bin/view/Main/Xyy instead of .../xwiki/bin/view/Main/XYY and vice-versa. If we were to make the decision today, I can't see a good reason why not to go case-insensitive, especially when targeting business users.
However we're not starting from a blank slate. There might be (I don't know that there is, but there might be) legitimate use cases for a page named "Xyy" vs a page named "XYY", both in the same wiki. I'd like to have a better idea of the consequences of this change, as well an analysis of a public site such as xwiki.org to see whether this could be causing unforeseen and other unexpected issues. In other words: what could go wrong?
Thanks,
Guillaume ᐧ
On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Eduard Moraru <enygma2002@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi users and devs,
I would like to have your opinion on the topic of case sensitive vs case insensitive and which one you prefer in XWiki.
Currently, XWiki is case sensitive. This means the same resource name (document name, space name, etc) can be written with either small letters or big letters or a mix.
Examples: You can have both "Main.Test" and "Main.test" as 2 different documents. Also, you can have "XWiki.Admin" and "XWiki.admin" as 2 different users. This also applies to URLs, as "/Main/Test" is different from "/Main/test" or "/main/test", so all these 3 are different resources.
Even from this short description, one can already identify possible problems of this approach.
From the top 3 operating systems (Linux, Mac an Windows), only Linux is case sensitive, the other two (more user-focused Operating Systems) are both case insensitive.
Since XWiki has one of its main targets the Enterprise users, it is safe to assume that the correct approach would be to also be more user-focused and simplify things and avoid confusions by being case insensitive as well.
Also, a quick search on existing issues validates the need for this improvement: http://jira.xwiki.org/issues/?jql=text%20~%20%22case%20insensitive%22
What do you think? Is it OK to keep XWiki case sensitive, or would you prefer it case insensitive? Bring arguments.
I have also created a jira issue for this idea: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-11412 to track it in the future.
Thanks, Eduard _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Hi, On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 3:45 PM, Jean SIMARD <jean.simard@xwiki.com> wrote:
As far as I know, Mac can be either case sensitive or case insensitive (just need to choose how you format your disk)*.
So we could do the same on XWiki and propose to choose between case sensitive and case insensitive at the installation (a variable in xwiki.properties)? I'm not against a case insentivity by default if I can switch it later.
Yes, indeed, but I would not call that "configurable", since it involves formatting your drive and choosing a filesystem that supports case sensitive/insensitive names.
* I have a Mac at home and mine is case sensitive but I configured it 2 years ago. I don't know if, in the last 2 years, Apple decided to remove this choice between case sentivity and case insensitivity.
At least for recent Mac computers, they come with a case insensitive FS by default. This options is also recommended in their documentation, for example when erasing and reinstalling your OSX: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH18869 (Yosemite) or http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14243 (Mavericks), etc. Thanks, Eduard
On Fri, Nov 07, 2014 at 12:03:14PM +0100, Guillaume Lerouge wrote:
Hi Edy,
thanks for your message. From a forward-looking standpoint, I 100% agree with you that switching XWiki to case-insensitive would be a good thing to do. I've seen others (as well as myself) be lost because they were going to .../xwiki/bin/view/Main/Xyy instead of .../xwiki/bin/view/Main/XYY and vice-versa. If we were to make the decision today, I can't see a good reason why not to go case-insensitive, especially when targeting business users.
However we're not starting from a blank slate. There might be (I don't know that there is, but there might be) legitimate use cases for a page named "Xyy" vs a page named "XYY", both in the same wiki. I'd like to have a better idea of the consequences of this change, as well an analysis of a public site such as xwiki.org to see whether this could be causing unforeseen and other unexpected issues. In other words: what could go wrong?
Thanks,
Guillaume ᐧ
On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Eduard Moraru <enygma2002@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi users and devs,
I would like to have your opinion on the topic of case sensitive vs case insensitive and which one you prefer in XWiki.
Currently, XWiki is case sensitive. This means the same resource name (document name, space name, etc) can be written with either small letters or big letters or a mix.
Examples: You can have both "Main.Test" and "Main.test" as 2 different documents. Also, you can have "XWiki.Admin" and "XWiki.admin" as 2 different users. This also applies to URLs, as "/Main/Test" is different from "/Main/test" or "/main/test", so all these 3 are different resources.
Even from this short description, one can already identify possible problems of this approach.
From the top 3 operating systems (Linux, Mac an Windows), only Linux is case sensitive, the other two (more user-focused Operating Systems) are both case insensitive.
Since XWiki has one of its main targets the Enterprise users, it is safe to assume that the correct approach would be to also be more user-focused and simplify things and avoid confusions by being case insensitive as well.
Also, a quick search on existing issues validates the need for this improvement: http://jira.xwiki.org/issues/?jql=text%20~%20%22case%20insensitive%22
What do you think? Is it OK to keep XWiki case sensitive, or would you prefer it case insensitive? Bring arguments.
I have also created a jira issue for this idea: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-11412 to track it in the future.
Thanks, Eduard _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
-- Jean Simard jean.simard@xwiki.com Research engineer at XWiki SAS http://www.xwiki.com Committer on the XWiki.org project http://www.xwiki.org _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
participants (3)
-
Eduard Moraru -
Guillaume Lerouge -
Jean SIMARD