[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Release Notes Application

Hi devs, I’m planning to write a Release Notes Application for xwiki.org. I’d like to do something relatively simple in order to have a first working version. Rationale ======== * Have nicer looking release notes by defining a structure and a common L&F * For users, be able to see all the release notes item from a given version to another version and by category Idea ==== Specifically for the “New and Networthy" section have: - A visual that looks like this: https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/features/ - 2 columns layout - For each item a screenshot and a summary text - (optional) Have a “Learn more” button that goes to the item and provides more info (and possibly more screenshots if need be) XProperties: - Version (in which the item has been added). Static list - Category (Help, Color Themes, Solr Search, AWM, etc). Static list - Main screenshot - Summary text - Additional content - Target audience (User, Admin, Developer). Static list Notes: - If no “main screenshot” is provided then the generated report will put the item in a Miscellaneous section For now I don’t want to handle other metadata for the releases notes, i.e. translations, upgrades, backward compat, tested browsers, etc). Precisely, I’m planning to write a “New and Networthy” application ATM, not a full “Release notes app”. The way it could be used is through a {{news/}} macro, e.g.: {{news from=“6.4” to=“8.2” [categories=“help,awm,...”] [targetAudience=“user,admin”] /}}. Usage ====== - There would be a page in the wiki to see the livetable corresponding to all the release notes news (the xproperties above) - Above this Livetable I imagine a form with several fields: — From version, — To Version — Category (if not empty generate the report only for that category) — Target (user, admin, dev). (if not empty only generate the report for that target audience) — + a “Generate” button to generate a dynamic "News and Networthy” report - We would also use Tags for each news to categorize it further, e.g. “usability”, “performance”, and the LT would display the tag cloud. This will allow for example to see all items between such version and such version that are related to, say, performance - We would still write a Release Notes page for each version but on that page, we would use the {{news/}} macro (with from = to = the version corresponding to that RN). On that page we would add all the other parts that are not in the app yet, i.e. translations, upgrades, backward compat, etc - When an XWiki developers codes a new feature or improvement or new API will use the app to add it. Future ====== * Add a different release notes app to include the other metadata * We could almost imagine using this “New and networthy” app to provide reference documentation for our features… :) (along with automatic “since”). That’s probably too science-fiction and I’m sure there are lots of gotchas but just mentioning it here to make us dream a bit... I’m starting to work on the POC. Let me know what you think. Thanks -Vincent