Vincent, Yes! From a users point of view improving the following areas would make a huge difference in useability:
* A super slick WYSIWYG editor providing similar functionality as offline web page editors/word processors to enable users to easily and quickly enter (and cut and paste text/images from Word, other web pages, etc) and structure and layout the content on a page would help win over non-techie users who don't like the wiki editor. WYSIWYG java based web editors: http://www.technobulls.com/2006/06/23/top-5-free-javascript-wysiwyg-editors/ For instance perhaps use an html editor like this with features added for XWiki linking, etc: http://www.fckeditor.net/ and http://www.fckeditor.net/demo This editor supports cut and paste from Word. It could be offered as an alternative to the current wiki and WYSIWYG editors? A WYSIWYG editor doesn't have to translate everything to wiki markup does it? - couldn't be a mixture of both to take advantage of both and existing html WYSIWYG editors - of course it wouldn't translate over to edit in the wiki editor - but would you need/want to? * A flexible means to quickly customise a wiki skin (fonts/colours/page layouts/menus/indexes/stats/etc) to be customised for a particular wiki site without resorting to hacking css files would be useful. * A wizard to install XWiki on apache tomcat or other and hook it into a database would also help eliminate common setup/installation issues/problems. On another note - have you seen the wiki daskboard on wikipedia by PARC research? http://wikidashboard.parc.com/ and an example http://wikidashboard.parc.com/w/index.php?title=United_States_presidential_e lection%2C_2008&diff=183392068&oldid=9947884 Regards, Richard -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Vincent Massol Sent: 10 January 2008 12:52 To: XWiki Users Subject: Re: [xwiki-users] Wiki and WYSIWYG editing On Jan 10, 2008, at 12:29 PM, goldring, richard wrote: > Just a thought: > > Perhaps XWiki should either allow users to edit a page with the wiki > editor > or the WYSIWYG editor BUT NOT BOTH and not provide translation > between them. > My reasoning is: > * that swapping between the editors can mess up the formatting - which > annoys users no end. > * the WYSIWYG wiki output can sometimes be hard to read and even > unreadable! > * the WYSIWYG could then provide additonal formatting not currently > supported by the wiki markup more easily (in HTML directly) > * first time users get confused with the two editors and swapping > between > them and they'd prefer the WYSIWYG editor as long as it didn't mess > up their > formatting > > Of course it would also be useful to provide some means via the > WYSIWYG > editor to add velocity, groovy code, HTML, etc to the page to retain > the > freedom and flexibility of the wiki editor. > > What do people think? Right now you can do what you suggest as a customization of your instance (for example forcing the use of the WYSIWYG editor or forcing the use of the wiki editor only). But the main problem is that there are a few annoying bugs in the WYSIWYG editor which can be fixed. Actually there aren't that many to make the WYSIWYG editor really slick (probably 3-4 main ones I'd say). Only issue is that it's a bit tricky to fix and the TinyMCE architecture isn't really scalable for the longer term future so that's why we've decided to implement a new WYSIWYG editor in Java using GWT. Now back to the current WYSIWYG editor, the XWiki project is welcoming all patches to fix it so it's only a matter of someone with Javascript skills providing some patches. We're also thinking about setting up some bounties and offering some money for people to work on specific parts of XWiki. This could be such a domain. Another one would be about creating new skins. Do you think this would help? Thanks -Vincent _______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users Thales UK Ltd (Wells) DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this e-mail is confidential. It may also be legally privileged. It is intended only for the stated addressee(s) and access to it by any other person is unauthorised. If you are not an addressee, you must not disclose, copy, circulate or in any other way use or rely on the information contained in this e-mail. Such unauthorised use may be unlawful. We may monitor all e-mail communications through our networks. If you have received this e-mail in error, please inform us immediately on +44 (0) 1749 672081 and delete it and all copies from your system. We accept no responsibility for changes to any e-mail which occur after it has been sent. Attachments to this e-mail may contain software viruses which could damage your system. 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