4 May
2018
4 May
'18
10:52 a.m.
Hi Vivek,
On 4 May 2018, at 10:15, Vivek Iyer
<vivekbalasundaram(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hello all!
My name is Vivek Iyer (github and Riot handle: Remorax) and I'm so grateful
for being selected as part of GSoC and I'm honestly looking forward to
contributing here!
Welcome aboard :)
My project for the summer is the Google Blockly Editor and to integrate it
with the current wiki and WYSIWYG editors. I plan to do this in four
stages:
- Firstly develop a small extension as test, so that I can build up on it.
- The second stage would be actually integrating a basic Blockly editor in
XWiki.
- The third stage would be adding custom blocks which generate the code for
functions which are most commonly used
- The fourth and the last stage would be making these blocks output
Velocity (or alternatively JS) code which would substitute the contents of
the div which would normally contain the manually written code.
Ideally, I plan on finishing stages 1 and 2 before the first evaluation,
stage 3 before the second evaluation and stage 4 before the final
evaluation.
As mentioned in my proposal, I'll be on vacation from 10th to 20th May and
won't have internet access so I'll be unable to contribute during that
period, but I'll surely make up for the lost time later on and get the work
done on schedule!
I've also kept buffer slots in between in case I run behind schedule.
I have also made a design on design.xwiki.org here:
http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Google-Blockly-Editor/
Do check it out and let me know your opinions!
I’ve had a quick look and it would be nice if you could reformulate the use cases in term
of features that the extensions needs to support.
For example instead of saying:
- The user enters his credentials.
- If authenticated, he is redirected to the dashboard.
- If the user is unable to authentinicate, the user is shown an error message saying
invalid credentials
You should simply say:
* Allow users to enter Google credentials in the Admin UI.
Question: is this needed? Why do we need to enter credentials? AFAICS there’s no need to
provide any credentials except if we wanted the optional cloud storage (which is not
something we want IMO since the storage is going to be in wiki pages).
Also you say:
- The user navigates to the page he wishes to edit.
- He selects the edit option and if he's an advanced user, he sees the Blockly editor
and selects it
You should simply say:
* Add a page editor to the list of available editors (Wiki, WYSIWYG, etc) so that users
can edit a page using the Blockly editor
You’re also missing this:
* Ability to define the Blockly editor as the default editor in the Admin and in the use’s
profile
Also you say:
- The Blockly editor contains various blocks for performing common XWiki scripting
actions
- The user selects the appropriate blocks which show up as code on the side div
- Once the user is done with the scripting, he clicks on the save and continue button
- He is then redirected and is able to view his changes.
This is not needed as it’s pretty obvious ;) This is just describing the usage of the
extension, not the requirements for the integration. You can put it in a usage section if
you want though.
Also you say:
- If the user is not an advanced user, he won't see the Blockly editor option and
would need to go to Settings and enable Advanced User in Preferences.
I’m not sure we want this since the goal is to try to make it as simple as possible for
any type of users to write some simple scripts in xwiki. I wouldn’t put such restriction
and would simply make it available to both simple and advanced users.
Then you’re missing lots of use cases…. I’ll write some but you should be the one
finishing the list:
- Ability to generate any scripting language output when saving the page, and starting
with Velocity.
- Ability to convert scripts writing in any scripting language into a visual Blockly view,
starting with Velocity. This needs to be explored and if this is not possible then it
means saving the Blockly data into a XObject of the pages and offering a custom Edit Sheet
to use that when editing the page with the Blockly Editor.
- Provide several Blocks by default that allow to do things in XWiki. Review common
actions that need to be done in scripting and offer blocks for them. For example: Ability
to write XWQL queries to return a list of pages and ability to execute actions on them:
replace content, copy, rename, delete. Send email. Etc. You can see the velocity scripting
guide to get ideas of commons things that need to be supported:
https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/DevGuide/Scripting/APIGu…
- Add ability for developers to create/edit new Blockly Blocks inside wiki pages. All the
provided blocks by default should be using this strategy so they can be modified.
I’ll let you port these use cases into the design doc! :)
I’m happy that we’re getting started.
Thanks!
-Vincent
That's all from my side. I'm eager for your feedback and happy to receive
any suggestions as to where I could improve my current schedule.
Thanks and regards,
Vivek Iyer