11 Jun
2015
11 Jun
'15
11:54 a.m.
On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 6:36 PM, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica)
<valicac(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
Since we discussed so many things lately and there are many technical
constrain that we are facing, I'm going to try to get some conclusions from
the UI perspective:
First of all there was the discussion about the usability tests. It's true
that users are confused that we provide 2 levels of hierarchy
(wiki/space/page and parent/child). If we can switch to just one it would
be great since it will simplify the user's mental model. Another problem
they had was with the naming, since wiki/space/page does not ring any
folder/page bell, even with the icon usage. That's why I like the concept
of nodes and only one type of entities that can have children. Since we are
on the Web, I think the most likely entity name we could use is 'page',
similar to content-page, web-page, wiki-page (even if technically is a
space or a document).
Having only one type of entity, I agree to the fact that we should remove
the space notion. We still have complexity, since we will have main-wiki,
wikis*, pages* (child-pages).
I also agree to remove the notion of 'WebHome' from UI. We can still use it
technically to differentiate old spaces from pages, but for the user
doesn't mean anything, except looking technical.
Regarding the global-menu, we need to remove the wiki>space>page+actions
display since it is not scalable. This means that the current breadcrumb
zone will display the hierarchy. This is perfectly normal with the current
navigation patterns used all over the Web. Note that classical breadcrumb
do not display entity-type or actions. We shouldn't either. This means (as
stated on http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Proposal/ExtendedBreadcrumb)
that we need to provide a Drawer + Move actions inside the content-menu.
Regarding actions, since we will have just one entity-type (not sure what
we do with the wikis) we will need to standardize the entity actions.
Currently we provide just 'Delete' for spaces, but if we don't display
Spaces differently and they are just nodes, this means that we will need to
implement or normalize the available actions. No matter what type it is
technically, the user should be able to: Add (child), Edit, Delete, View,
Administer, Copy, Rename, Move, Export, Watch, View History, View
Informations, View Attachments, View Comments, View Rights, View Objects,
etc.
Now, what I really don't like are the long URL.
For me this is the most bad
decision we can make. Nobody uses long URL on the web. I really like the
way our current parent/child works, it provides the hierarchy in the UI,
invisible in the URL (keeping it relevant to the current page). Hierarchy
anyway should we displayed in Trees, not linear in URLs, since it's hard to
read. People like short URL. They are easier to share, easier to scan,
easier to understand what the content is about. We have the breadcrumbs for
navigation, the URL is for identification.
+1, I don't like long URLs either.
Thanks,
Marius
Thanks,
Caty
On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 11:40 AM, Eduard Moraru <enygma2002(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
Going on the "node" architecture, where we have only documents and child
documents, here's something interesting that pops up as "the way to go"
when storing a tree structure in SQL [1]: Closure Table [2]. It seems to
cover pretty much all use cases, as solution 1 (Path Enumeration - what we
are doing with the "space" document field) is limited [3] when it comes to
changes in the tree structure (i.e. renaming/moving a document).
Note: There is also the extension [4] that includes a depth column which
would be most useful as well. Basically, getting the list of parents of a
document would cost only 1 query, sorting by depth to preserve hierarchy.
Of course, all this requires an extra table in the database for storing the
hierarchy relationship.
WDYT?
Thanks,
Eduard
----------
[1] http://www.slideshare.net/billkarwin/sql-antipatterns-strike-back/48
[2] http://www.slideshare.net/billkarwin/sql-antipatterns-strike-back/68
[3] http://www.slideshare.net/billkarwin/sql-antipatterns-strike-back/77
[4] http://www.slideshare.net/billkarwin/sql-antipatterns-strike-back/76
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 3:38 PM, vincent(a)massol.net <vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
of
instead
as
be
simpler).
document
threads.
complex.
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On 6 Jun 2015 at 14:20:46, vincent(a)massol.net (vincent(a)massol.net
(mailto:
vincent(a)massol.net)) wrote:
introduces
a
Hi Marius,
On 4 Jun 2015 at 18:16:03, Marius Dumitru Florea (
mariusdumitru.florea@xwiki.com(mailto:mariusdumitru.florea@xwiki.com))
wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 5:10 PM, Guillaume "Louis-Marie" Delhumeau
> wrote:
> > Hello XWiki committers.
> >
> >
> > Vincent have proposed the development of nested spaces for 7.2 and
some
of
> > > us have already agreed. But the concept of nested spaces > >
problem that Denis have mentioned during some internal discussions
at XWiki
> > SAS, and that I am going to report
here.
> >
> >
> > From a UI perspective, differentiating pages `A.B.C.WebHome` and
`A.B.C`
> > > could become very difficult.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > > Moreover, we know that a lot of users do not understand the notion > >
spaces, and they are lost when you look at them during usability
sessions.
>
> I'm not sure about this statement. My feeling is that many users
> understand spaces as "folders" (they make the analogy with the file
> system). Moreover, whenever we display a space in the XWiki UI we use
> the folder icon, so we encourage the users to make this analogy.
I agree with Guillaume here. We’ve seen it on this list but more
importantly Caty
has done some recorded usability sessions and if I
remember correctly it was clearly showing the problem. And users don’t
understand that Spaces are like Folders which is why we also had this
discussion on the list at one point about renaming them as Folder.
In any case, removing one concept can only be simpler IMO. I find it
simpler to
have 2 concepts (Wiki, Pages: A wiki is a set of pages) of 3 (Wiki, Spaces, Pages: a wiki is a set of
spaces, which each one
containing pages).
It
> > The situation is even worse if you consider the notion of
parent/child
> > > documents, which is completely unrelated to the actual hierarchy. > > > creates confusion!
> > >
> > >
> >
> > > To fix these problems, we propose to introduce the notion of
"nested
> >
documents", i.e. the ability to create documents inside documents.
>
> What's the difference at a *conceptual* level between the notion of
> parent/child we have right now and the notion of nested documents you
> propose? I don't see it.
Yes it’s the same thing from a User POV. One difference is that we want
a
reference to contain the full path of a doc. Right now you’d need to
transport the (Doc Reference + the full Breadcrumb) to represent the same
thing.
But I agree that it’s the same concept, it’s just a different
implementation.
That’s why I’m proposing to drop the parent/child fields we have them now since it’s just duplicating the
concepts (and it’s
confusing for users), and to reimplement the Breadcrumb UI using Doc
References.
.../view/Space.Page2
Note that having the full location in the reference also allows to have
URLs
containing the full path which is interesting (for knowing where you
are by looking at the URL: http://.../view/Space.Page1, http:// doesn’t indicate anything about the relationship
between Page1 and Page2
when Page1 could the parent of Page2). It’s also interesting for SEO.
to
> You even use "parent" and "child" words below
> to explain the "nested" notion. The word "nested" sounds very
> technical to me. I don't know about French, but in my native language
> the translation for "nested" is not a commonly used word, unlike
> parent and child. It seems easier to me to explan to a user that a
> document can have a parent document and some child documents (the
> parent / child relationship) then to explain them that a document can
> be "nested" inside another document and can "nest" other
documents
> too.
I don’t think GL has suggested to use the word Nested anywhere in the
UI… It’s
just a word we use internally to describe the feature. I’m fine continue using the terminology Parent and
Children.
would
> > Say differently, if a page `A.B.C` exists, nothing should stop the
user
to
> > create the document `A.B.C.D`.
>
> You mentioned JCR on the next paragraph. Are JCR nodes identified by
> the position (path) in the tree?
Yes. They call it Path (we call it a Document Reference).
> I think we should make a distinction
> between the way we identify a document and the way we access that
> document.
This means using unique ids for identifying docs (and this is what we
already have
in the DB except the Id is based on its path in the DB but
this could be changed and this is our problem). Of course in the UI we
should never display these ids.
> I like the fact that currently when you change the parent of
> a document the document identifier (reference) stays the same.
It’s not fully true. When we rename a doc the doc id is modified.
What would be interesting would be the ability to have several Document
References
for a given doc (with one being the default probably). This is
something I’ve been interested in implementing for a long time but it probably require some model changes and it’s not
for XWiki 7.x IMO. We
could discuss it when we talk about XWiki 8.x and the new model in
general.
See also
http://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Design/XWikiModel20 (on
that page I had put: “Ability to have multiple references pointing to the
same entity” and yes this is also supported by the JCR API).
Also note the idea of "An Entity can be a pointer to another Entity (e.g
of use case: rename, aliases)” from that doc. This should be not to hard
to
implement using our current model by adding a
Type field in the DB. But
it’s a breaking change that would require 8.x (because current apps doing
queries on the doc table would get the “pointer” Types which should be
excluded, unless we add a filter to search*() APIs + the Query API).
Thanks
-Vincent
> > > In JCR[1], there is only one concept: the "node". A node can
have a
> > > content, and a list of child nodes. In XWiki, documents could
become
a kind
kind
> > of nodes, and we do not need spaces
anymore.
> >
> >
> > If we don't have space anymore, we could ask ourselves: "How the
rights
> > will be propagated to the children
documents? How do we distinguish
rights
> > applied to the documents and the rights
applied to the children?"
> >
> >
> > I think the easiest solution is to inherit the rights from the
parent
to
> > > the children, unless an object prevent it. We already have this of
the
> > mechanism with XWikiRights and
XWikiGlobalRights. XWikiRights would
be
> > applied for the current document, and
XWikiGlobalRights for the
document and
> > its children.
> >
> >
> > But changing the XWiki model is a lot of work, that we don't have
time to
> > > achieve for 7.2. So we propose to make it step by step.
> > >
> > >
> > > The first step is to change the UI to hide the notion of space to > >
users. Concretely, each time a user wants to create a page called
`A`, we
> > actually create the document
`A.WebHome`. So any child of this page
would
> > > be created in the `A` space, like `A.Child`. But this child would in a
http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Document+Tree+Macro#HD…
> > space too, so it would be
`A.Child.WebHome` actually.
>
> I find this 'A.WebHome' thing too complex. Look at the document
> hierarchy tree
> . We
can hide the spaces already by relying on the parent / child
> relationship.
A.WebHome is too complex which is exactly why Guillaume is sending this
proposal
about Nested Documents. The idea is that the doc will be seen as
“A" for the user (and implemented technically as A.WebHome till we update
the DB to remove the “space” field, which would make the impl much
> > Then, when we display the `A.WebHome` page, we remove all mentions
to
the
> > > `WebHome` name. In the UI, it will just be presented as the `A`.
an
> > This is a good point, knowing the fact
that the term `WebHome` have
no
> > sense for the user, neither in English
or in other languages.
> >
> >
> > Again, these changes are only for the UI. For the applications, it
is
the
> > > developer's job to decide if the app will create documents like
> > > `Document.WebHome` or basic documents just as before.
> > >
> > >
> > > The question of what to do with AWM comes up. When a user creates entry,
> > > should it be a new-kind-of-document (`AppSpace.Entry.WebHome`) or
an
> > > old-kind-of-document
(`AppSpace.Entry`)? The first option is good
for
> >
consistency and for the new possibilities it offers, but the second
is
> > better for retro-compatibility. And the
question will be the same
for all
> > existing applications that create
pages. I believe we should answer
these
> > > questions on a case-by-case basis and deserve their own mail > > >
> > >
> > > This proposal also implies to change some macros, like the
{{space}}
one,
we
> > and some panels. But I believe there is
no blocking-point there.
> >
> >
> > Finally, after these steps are accomplished in 7.2 and polished
until
the
> > > end of the 7.x cycle, we will refactor the XWiki model (something dream
"nested
> > about for years).
> >
> >
> > To sum up, the idea we propose is:
> >
> >
> > On the short run:
> >
> > - Hide the notion of space in the UI.
> >
> > - Hide the `WebHome` name in the UI.
> >
> > - When a user creates a page from the UI, it actually creates a
space
with
> > > a WebHome.
> > >
> > > - Remove the current parent/child mechanism which is outdated (and
> > > confusing) compared to the new hierarchy.
> > >
> > >
> > > On the long run:
> > >
> > > - Remove the notion of space in the model, and replace it by > > > documents".
> > >
> > > - Tune the rights system to inherit rights from parents to
children.
>
>
> >
> > Of course, we can discuss the technical details and the
implementation
> > strategies. But for now, we need to
know if you accept the general
idea
> > > (nested documents).
> > >
> > >
> >
> > > So, I hope you will like this proposal, and here is my +1.
> >
> > I'm not convinced. I don't see why we should drop the parent/child
> > relationship in order to introduce something similar but more >
> I’d say mostly because we need to transport the full location in the
Doc
Reference, which allows us to do lots of things:
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- display it in the URL
- no need to recompute the breadcrumb every time we need to display the
hierarchy
(which is the case now and it doesn’t scale)
- ability in the future to have several
references for a single doc
- consistency: there’s no reason that the space would be in the
reference but not
the parent… ATM we have two concurrent concepts which
makes it impossible for users to understand the difference between Spaces
and child/parent relationships.
Thanks
-Vincent
> Thanks,
> Marius
>
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Guillaume D.
> >
> >
> >
> > [1] JCR:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_repository_API_for_Java
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Guillaume Delhumeau (gdelhumeau(a)xwiki.com)
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