On 8/17/07, Catalin Hritcu <catalin.hritcu@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Asiri,

On 8/17/07, Asiri Rathnayake <asiri.rathnayake@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Catalin and all,
>
> On 8/17/07, Catalin Hritcu < catalin.hritcu@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Asiri,
> >
> > Why don't you use the space key? It used to be that the title was
> > always set to this key. If you were setting a title different then the
> > key then this title was just discarded and the key was returned. That
> > was not normal.
> >
> > Now about space titles being empty, this is a possible situation in
> > XWiki (document titles can also be empty). If you want to treat this
> > situation differently why not do it on the client side ? And if you
> > need to use the space key, then just use the space key and forget
> > about the title.
>
> This is the issue, at the beginning of XEclipse, we thought a key was
> something that should be used to refer to documents within programs (not
> displayed to users) - This is the purpose of a key (a unique identifier). I
> think it is necessary we keep this terminology since otherwise we'll violate
> the whole purpose of a key (please someone correct me if this is not the
> purpose of a key).
>
Yes, a key does identify a space, but it is not cryptic like the IDs
used in the API (the IDs are numbers in confluence, and opaque strings
in XWiki). You can display a key to an user without problems. So yes,
keys are identifiers, and no keys are not supposed to be hidden from
the user like the PageID, CommentID etc.

Isn't the whole point of having a space name / title is to display it whenever possible ? I mean, if we use space keys in XEclipse, that means we're not being user friendly - assuming titles are more expressive than keys.

> Now titles on the other hand are what users understand
> (what we should display to them) and I think we should not allow them to be
> empty - but in case if a title is not available, we can use the key (since
> there is no other option).
>
Yes, titles (or space names) can be more expressive. In particular
they can contain spaces, be longer etc. In XWiki they are displayed in
a special field on top of the edit box (which btw is empty by
default).

Most important these two properties of a space can be changed
independently, and the value of one should not influence the value of
the other. This is what the current implementation does.

Agreed.

> So in summary, XEclipse was developed with the assumptions,
>
> 1. Keys should be used whenever we refer to documents within programs (like
> when invoking XMLRPCs).
>
> 2. Keys should be mapped into titles (or names) when a document is presented
> to a user.
>
I think you make a major confusion between space keys and IDs. They
are not the same, see above. Your statements here are true only for
IDs not for space keys.

Ok, didn't know about this. The word "key" always brings a cryptic identifier to my mind....

> We can change XEclipse to use keys only and forget about titles, but that
> will take some more time. And most importantly, this might affect XEclipse
> on XWiki 1.1.
>
Not true. On XWiki 1.1 the title/name was always equal to the key, so
whenever you thought you were using the title/name you were actually
using the key. Now you would use the key explicitly.

> Anyway, in my personal opinion, i think it's necessary we keep the
> distinction between keys and titles intact.
>
This is exactly what i did. They used to be the same, now there is a
clear distinction between the two.

I too thought of them separately and expected them to be different. Anyway, with the current scheme, we cannot use space names / titles alone on XEclipse since some names can be empty (as you said). So now there are three possibilities,

1. Use space keys only in client (for everything) - Then what is the use of space names / titles ? <-- have to answer if we are to go with this option. And this requires XEclipse to be changed.

2. Enforce spaces to have a title ( a.k.a not ""). <-- Ideal scenario.

3. Use titles / names whenever they are available and switch to space keys otherwise - this should be done on server (see my patch). <-- This is possible since space keys and titles / names can be changed independently. The only disadvantage of this scheme is that sometimes users get to see a title / name of a space which is not the actual title (when actual title is "").

I would go with the third option.

What would you think ?

Regards,

- Asiri

Regards,
Catalin

> > On 8/17/07, Asiri Rathnayake <asiri.rathnayake@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > Sorry about the late response. Busy with academic work :(
> > >
> > > The patch attached will fix the XMLRPC issue related to XEclipse. Please
> > > verify it and let me know what you think.
> > > I tested XEclipse with this patch and everything is normal now.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > > - Asiri
> > >
> > >
> > > On 8/16/07, Catalin Hritcu <catalin.hritcu@gmail.com > wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > I updated the xml-rpc implementation on trunk. There are big changes
> > > > so be careful when updating since some of the changes are
> > > > incompatible.
> > > > - all non-string primitive types (like date and int) are now encoded
> to
> > > strings
> > > > the easiest to adapt to this is to start using swizzle which makes the
> > > > translation automatic
> > > > - the way all identifiers are built has changed
> > > > anyway, ids should be treated as opaque handlers, so if you ever find
> > > > yourself parsing them then you are doing something wrong.
> > > > - the way the page history is different now
> > > > only old versions of the page are considered, and they can be accessed
> > > > like regular pages
> > > >
> > > > There are other smaller fixes, but these are the most important ones.
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Catalin
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>