Hi Guillaume, Guillaume Lerouge wrote: > 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.
Not exactly. The idea was that an admin or a wiki programmer could configure the annotation application (such as setting an XWiki class as the annotation type) and then whenever a user adds an annotation, he will get, in the annotation "bubble", a form to edit an object from that class. Right now, to do that, you'd need to write a few java components & rewrite the js client. The idea is to have that easily configurable, "scriptable" from the wiki. > > >> * 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? I don't have a plan. > > >> - 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) Application with server side code, I don't know exactly how this would be called. > > *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? No, it's not atm afaik, although Scribo could be implemented like that (Scribo annotations are structured, not only a piece of text, even if "serializable" as a text). Actually this point is supposed to be an iteration in both directions (not only about typed annotations leaving behind the second requirement), and for the annotation target I specified: >> and one should easily set a field in a >> structured document which would support annotations. > > >> * 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), >> > > :-) Thanks, Anca > > Guillaume > > >> Anca >> _______________________________________________ >> devs mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs >> > > > _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
