On Feb 11, 2010, at 10:20 AM, Caleb James DeLisle wrote:
>
>
> Vincent Massol wrote:
>> Hi Caleb,
>>
>> On Feb 11, 2010, at 3:43 AM, Caleb James DeLisle wrote:
>>
>>> The problem:
>>> When a new wiki administrator uses the registration application, they are
>>> faced with a set of fields with
>>> names which are too short to explain what each field is for.
>>> eg:
>>> Boolean field named: "Check Active fields for user authentication"
>>>
>>> To a new administrator, this is confusing and it's not apparent where to
>>> look for an explanation.
>>>
>>>
>>> Proposal:
>>> I would like to add fields with names which are links to descriptions of
>>> what those fields are for.
>>> I can implement this in the "configurable" class which I am working on.
>>>
>>> This means XE would have links to xwiki.org but it already does on the
>>> dashboard explanation of tags.
>>>
>>> WDYT?
>>
>> I don't like it too much. IMO XE should be standalone. This is why we've
>> taken pains to have the syntax guide directly in XE for example. The reason
>> is simple: you can install XE locally and have no internet access.
>>
>> We do have a solution for field help. I haven't used it myself but I'm sure
>> others here can comment on it.
>>
>> It's used for example on the XWiki SAS intranet, something like this:
>> http://tinycoke.com/_6rXVfMRfwk2/screen_shot_2010-02-11_at_8.39.20_am.png
>>
>> WDYT?
>
> Though I agree with the philosophy of separating XE from xwiki.org, my
> opinion is that the advantages of xwiki.org
> being more likely to be up to date and not having to maintain multiple copies
> of each help document (and svn commit them)
> outweigh the disadvantage of system administrators who can't access the
> internet being unable to see the help files.
>
> An alternative might be to have maven pull the documents from xwiki.org and
> put them in XE automatically, but I still
> don't like the fact that users will be forced to install documentation in
> their database to have the "default pages"
I've done it the other way around for the syntax page. It's pulled from svn on
xwiki.org.
> perhaps the most elegant solution is to provide xwiki.org for download as an
> xar so users can have all of the
> documentation if they wish, links could point to an application which would
> redirect the user to xwiki.org if the
> documentation was not locally installed.
Yes, but not in this manner IMO. We need it controlled (versioned, committed,
with svn tag, ip clearance, etc). What I'd propose is to create a help
application in platform/applications (but not for your use case, more for
tutorials, getting started guide, etc - We'd need to define the content) and
have this help app available on xwiki.org too (in order to prevent duplication).
FYI here's how I've done it for the syntax page (but this would need to be
improved for a full XAR):
{{velocity}}
#set ($content =
$xwiki.getURLContent("http://svn.xwiki.org/svnroot/xwiki/enterprise/trunk/wiki/src/main/resources/XWiki/XWikiSyntax.xml";))
#set ($newdoc = $xwiki.getDocument("Dummy"))
#set ($newdocprivate = $newdoc.getDocument())
$newdocprivate.fromXML($content)
{{html clean="false"}}
$newdoc.getRenderedContent()
{{/html}}
{{/velocity}}
IMO for your use case what the user needs is a tooltip or a popup that explains
what a field is. What he doesn't want is a new page opened or pointing to a
help page where he has to parse the page to look for the information he need.
>
> More realistically, I think documentation will just remain harder to find.
I don't understand this point. Could you explain?
Thanks
-Vincent
>
> Anyway that is my opinion,
>
> Caleb
>
>>
>> Thanks
>> -Vincent
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