Hi Anca, On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Anca Luca <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hello devs, > > The current state of the annotation feature in the sandbox can be described > by > the following: > * there is a single type of annotation which can be added, using a specific > javascript client backed by a rest service. Such an annotation contains an > annotation text, the annotated content and its position and this type is > highly > coupled in the plugin implementation > * the backing annotation storage is based on components, currently with an > XWiki > objects implementation but a different service can be easily created (there > is > one implemented for Scribo annotations stored in RDF) > * for the moment, only xwiki documents and feed entries fetched by the > feedreader plugin can be used as targets for annotations (the annotated > documents), with the restriction that the content of the document is *not* > generated using scripting. A component can be implemented for a new type of > document but the current UI (the javascript client) is *specific to xwiki > documents* > * the javascript client (UI) is only in the state of a prototype: while > proving > that it works, it is not robust enough and the user experience is poor > * annotation creation algorithm seems to perform well in practice, but we > should > put it to more real-world test (by releasing). > > Some *requirements* in terms of functionality, in order to make this an > extensible and flexible feature, would be to: > * be able to have different types of annotations (one to be able to easily > specify fields for the annotations to add), with storage as xwiki objects. > This > needs to be flexible at all levels: UI and storage backend, preferably > using > xwiki scripting (no jars on the server side, or java coding) so that it can > be > easily customized. Also, the annotation UI should be thought of as easy to > customize and create whatever forms and actions in a light manner. > I'm not sure I understand this one well. What exactly do you mean by "different types of annotations"? From what I understand right now, this means the following: 1. I select text and choose to annotate it 2. I select custom properties for my annotation (let's say additional "city" & "country" fields) 3. I fill in those fields and save the annotation 4. My annotation is saved with those custom fields If this is correct, I'm a bit afraid this will bring un-needed complexity both to the UI and the backend implementation. From what I understood so far it looks a bit like having the XClass editor each time ones creates a new annotation -> isn't that overkill? An alternative solution I was thinking about was to use only 1 field with a semantic syntax & autosuggest (something like: @city:Paris @country:France). Is that a possible option? Or maybe it doesn't make sense in the context or your work? Yet another option would be to offer a number of already configured types to select from in a list when adding a new annotation. > * be able to annotate any type of document (object inside such a document), > namely all or any number of text fields in such an object. Preferably this > should also be doable only using xwiki scripting or configuration. > Sounds good. I would like to propose the following road to perfect this feature: > *Version 1.0* (somewhere in the timeframe of XE 2.1 RCs) > The aim would be to take feature out of sandbox preserving its current > features: > allowing to add a specific type of annotation saved as XWiki object on a > regular, non scripted XWiki Document. We should: > - format, improve comments, generally clean up the current code sandbox to > match > XWiki coding styles > - refactor packages and components to remove some dependencies issues and > increase flexibility > - simplify flow, stripping out all code which is not strictly needed by the > targeted functionality (such as the Feed entry handling code), and make it > easily implementable by a component in a distinct jar (so that the Scribo > requirements currently implemented can be preserved) > - finish the javascript client: robust user interaction, intuitive > interface, > cleaned up integration with XE > Do you plan on using GWT to achieve this? If not, what's the best way to code it in a cross-browser, maintainable way? Using one of the JS library already embedded in XWiki such as Prototype I guess? > - ensure quality assurance process by a well setup battery of tests, unit > and > functional > At this point I propose to have the annotation feature as an installable > plugin > but not included by default in XE, unless after a few bugfixing cycles. > Plugin or component? (maybe this is the same thing under a different name) *Version 1.1* (somwhere in the timeframe of XE 2.2, at the beginning of next > year) > * first iteration on the 2 desired features. At this point one should be > able to > configure the type of annotation to add, UI should be accomodate this type, > backing XWiki storage should be easy to integrate with any annotation > storage > service (for Scribo requirements), and one should easily set a field in a > structured document which would support annotations. (Note that this might > require heavy rewrite / refactor of the 1.0 version. We could decide to > skip it > and go straight to this version, but it would take longer.) > My personal point of view is that being able to annotate any part of a XWiki document is more important than being able to configure the type of annotation to add. Is there a hard requirement on the order from the Scribo research project on this? > * integration of Scribo requirements can be met at this point by setting > the > configurations according to the Scribo annotation type and target > requirements. > At this point, if we find appropriate, we could make the decision of > including > the annotation feature in XE by default > I guess that will depend on its quality by this time. I think it would be a great addition to XE's default feature set. *Version 1.2* (future) > * finish the 2 requirements, integration with Scribo would be done in the > same > manner, by specific configuration and storage backend specific > implementation. > > What do you think? > I think this can become a key differentiating feature of XWiki since I'm not aware of any wiki that has them implemented yet. MS Word's annotation system is widely used and I think XWiki annotation would resonate positively with XWiki users coming from such text editors. For the moment I will focus on version 1's tasks while finding a good > architecture to achieve the desired requirements, converting, where > necessary, > the direction of the development towards that goal. > > Thanks (for reading this very long mail), > :-) Guillaume > Anca > _______________________________________________ > devs mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs > -- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki SAS Skype: wikibc Twitter: glerouge http://guillaumelerouge.com/ _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
