Hi,

I am wondering what is the recommended method to manage "complex"
wiki-documents, and by "complex" I mean documents that are scattered across
multiple wiki-articles using WikiLinks.

I have users that are used to writing long specification & design documents
as Word documents, and have expressed interest in starting to work in
Trac-wiki instead.
As far as document management & versioning is concerned, I would like to
allow them to manage their wiki documents at-least as easily and intuitively
as file-based documents allow.
The main use-cases include:
- The ability to specify that a wiki-page is a part of a "document" (ideas:
page-hierarchy, wiki-properties?)
- Embedding some header / footer in all wiki-pages that "belong" to a
specific document with some metadata and a link to the "document root"
(ideas: based on solution to previous bullet, inject custom template with a
plugin?)
- Allow management of *document*-metadata (as opposed to
*wiki-page*-metadata) in some convenient way (metadata includes:
organizational-reference, business classification, version info & version
history, authors, reviewers).
- Support document-versioning that is *at-least* as good as copying
"myDoc-v1.doc" to "myDoc-v2.doc" and updating the metadata accordingly. I
write "at-least as good" because it seems that the wiki infrastructure
should allow much better abilities, like automating the
version-tagging-process, possibly supporting constraints (chain of
review-approve), diffs between versions, showing a "jump to" navigation bar
between document versions (like in the source browser), etc.
- When viewing a document that "was not released" show a "draft" watermark.
- When trying to edit a "released version" of the document, warn the user
and suggest branching a new version.
- Allow automatic generation of document-wide table-of-contents and
document-map (like TracGuide) (ideas: if using page-hierarchy, TOCMacro
might be able to do it).
- Support document navigation based on flow (something like "next/prev
page", with "up" taken care by page-hierarchy).
- Enable "document-export" (for printing / archiving purposes) into PDF /
DOC, ideally supporting custom document templates that are populated
according to some business-logic (e.g. metadata, list of figures, etc.)
- Allow cross-references between documents that are version-aware, possibly
allowing automated generation of "applicable documents" and "this document
is referenced by ...".

The TracGuide is an example for such a document.
It contains a table-of-contents (not sure how it is generated),
and version-branches (e.g. 0.11/TracGuide)
(although I'm not sure whether this process is manual or automated -
Christian?),
but I listed many other use-cases that are not present in the TracGuide
example.

What I would like to hear from dedicated readers who made it to this part
(thanks! :-) ):
- Ideas how to implement some of the use-cases I described based on existing
Trac (0.12) features.
- Pointers to plugins that may assist.
- Suggestions on how to implement by writing a new plugin.
- Maybe additional use-cases from users with similar needs.

Apologies for the long post...
- Itamar O.

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