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Wiki-like capability

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Sophi Italy

Thursday 08 May 2003 10:03:32 am

Is there any plan to include a Wiki-like capability in eZ? In particular, in decreasing order of importance, for all web users (not just admins) to be able to:

- Reference new pages (objects) that have not yet been created
- Reference existing objects by their name (wikis typically use a CamelCaseName name rule to do detect intended page names)
- Have some sub-object like structure to keep names scoped
- Do easy "diff" between versions of objects
- Do basic formatting without having to use (buy) a wysiwyg editor

Thanks.

Gabriel Ambuehl

Thursday 08 May 2003 12:01:45 pm

You can already have everything except the most utterly weird Wiki feature of UpperCaseName linking.

Doesn't really do diffs, but versioning is there.

But if you want Wiki (however bad I consider the concept to be), you'd probably be better of using TikiWiki.

Visit http://triligon.org

Bård Farstad

Friday 09 May 2003 12:22:04 am

We have planned version diffing and simpler formatting. It will not be introduced in 3.1, but we would like to add this to the community doc here at ez.no as soon as possible.

We are also considering simpler linking between objects.

--bård

Documentation: http://ez.no/doc

Sophi Italy

Friday 09 May 2003 10:22:36 am

I understand that some people don't like the "CamelCase" syntax, but if you generalize a bit the idea is very useful. In fact many wikis today allow simple delimiters to designate a named object reference e.g. ((name of object)). Others allow nested namespaces e.g. ((start object name : child name : grandchild name)).

[my comments below are based on incomplete understanding of eZ, so please bear with me ...]

The main intent is easy creation of links between objects, which requires easy ways to refer to other objects.

Lots of applications want ways to easily link objects. If some object structure is present (as in eZ), it can be used as a namespace, and we can use object names or attribute names to easily refer to objects e.g. without having to go through URL details. Moreover, with an eZ-like explicit object structure, one might even be able to refer to paths to objects by sequences of attribute names or object names [e.g. xPath-like names].

Also there is no intrinsic reason why the target of a reference must exist before you create the reference. This is one of the wonderful things about Wikis, but the idea is much older. e.g. only the most restrictive programming languages require definition (exist) before use (create reference). The better ones allow declaration (assert existence) before use; and the most flexible ones allow easy mixing in an incremental and interpreted environment, with the option for checking dangling links etc. This is where Wiki's "pending reference" idea is extremely helpful to the smooth and fluid creation of an interlinked object graph.

Thoughts?