Hi Vincent, thanks for your feedback. Please see my answers below.
On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 4:43 PM, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Guillaume, > > See below. > > On 23 Nov 2015 at 15:30:09, Guillaume Lerouge ([email protected](mailto: > [email protected])) wrote: > > > Hi Devs, > > > > first of all I'd like to congratulate everyone who worked on the latest > 7.x > > releases. I tried a 7.4 snapshot locally and it's looking great! The > > interface feels much simpler and fresher overall, well done! > > Thanks, glad you like it. > > > Nested spaces bring about a significant change in the way information is > > stored and organized in XWiki. They make it less necessary to create > > sub-wikis to compartmentalise information. > > > > Besides, at the moment a sub-wiki is almost exactly the same as the main > > wiki upon creation. I've been doing plenty of demos of XWiki 7.4 at a > > conference last week and it was difficult to explain the difference > between > > the main wiki and a sub-wiki. > > > > Therefore, I would like to suggest the following changes: > > > > 1. *View the main wiki as a collaborative content repository* (what a > > wiki is most often associated with). Therefore the main wiki would have > the > > most wiki-like features (treeview and tagcloud in a pane on the left) and > > global activity stream on the home page. Users looking for a "simple" > wiki > > wouldn't even need to create sub-wikis. > > > > 2. *View subwikis as collaborative workspaces* (created for a project or > > another type of shorter-lived initiative). A subwiki would retain the > > appbar on the left, as well as panels on the right that are specific to > > each app (ex: forum app, blog app...). The homepage would be made of > > widgets surfacing information from the various apps installed. Additional > > subwiki templates could be added later on, once flavors are built into > the > > product. > > > > 3. *Add the horizontal menu to the standard install.* In addition to > > this, an entry should be added to the menu to automatically list existing > > sub-wikis the user has access to. This would make navigation between > wikis > > more discoverable and easier to use. > > Related to this, we’re already planning this: > http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-12538 > Indeed, is would answer the use case quite nicely. > My feeling is that these changes would make the distinction between nested > > spaces and sub-wikis much easier to explain and understand for users: > > > > - *Want to share generic information? Put it in the right location in > > the main wiki.* > > - *Want to work with others on a restricted project? Create a sub-wiki > > for this purpose.* > > > > With the addition of the horizontal menu, the main wiki would act as > both a > > portal to information and a knowledge repository. > > > > Looking forward to your feedback, > > I think you’re entering into flavors here. There are plenty of various > needs and you’re listing one. There are others, such as using XWiki for a > farm (just to list one). > > That’s exactly why we’ve started developing the notion of flavors btw. > > So far, what we’ve agreed not long ago was to say that the XWiki project > should focus on offering a generic platform with a generic default flavor. > And to leave it to the community to offer flavors on extensions.xwiki.org and > those flavors would appear then first time you install XWiki or create a > subwiki. > This does not change the fact that the generic platform should be a sensible "default" state. While I agree that item 2 would be fixed by flavors and item 3 isn't needed with the drawer solution described above, it does not change my feedback about item 1 (though I'm not sure what you mean by "generic" nor how you define it). In any case, at the moment I don't see how the current main wiki is more "generic" than the solution I'm proposing. Actually, I think it's actually less "generic" since it's further away from what people expect of a "wiki" than my proposal, since most wikis don't have an app bar but a navigation tree :-) In conclusion I don’t see how points 1, 2 or 3 could be integrated in a > default platform flavor because they really look specific. I personally > wouldn't 3 by default since our goal was to unclutter XWiki and the menu > would add back clutter and I don’t think that all flavors require such an > horizontal menu. > > Regarding the differences between spaces and wikis, we have this thread > listing the differences: > http://markmail.org/message/qcjnev4qkhvjivj2 > > This led to > http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/WikivsNestedSpaces which > we should move to the doc proper. I’ll try to do this in the coming days. > I happen to be well aware of that page since I was part of the discussion thread that led to its creation :-) Unfortunately, it's a poor solution to the issue at hand. You can't expect a brand new user to go through that page and understand all the implications when pondering whether to create a nested page or a sub-wiki. IIRC, you've quoted the KISS principle at us a number of times in the past. I'm sure you'll agree that this page is anything but Simple ;-) Having a simple heuristic for users asking the question would be much better IMHO. Thanks, Guillaume Thanks > -Vincent > > > Guillaume > _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
