New subject: [xwiki-devs] FW: New Admin Design direction

20 May 2008

On May 20, 2008, at 8:51 AM, Evelina Slatineanu wrote:

...
  Hi,

 Yes, I've read that document a hundred times but the implementation  
 proposal
 changed about that much too :P
 So, yes, Vincent is right about the fact that we should follow the  
 interface
 extension direction for the new applications that we are going to  
 make but,
 so far, since we don't have the interface extensions I am a little bit
 puzzled about the whole thing. What I don't know how to do is:

 1. In what way an application should contribute admin pages to the
 administration application? For this we should have at least some  
 classes &
 objects generically defined for each application and the  
 administration one
 to read these objects and to be able to know what to include (even
 hardcoded) in the administration menu, as Vincent says. And isn't  
 this what
 interface extension application is suppose to do? Please correct me  
 if I am
 wrong or I did not understand the request. 
Right now the admin page should hardcode the link to the admin pages  
of the apps. This part will be replaced when IX are there.
However before printing the link we should check if the application is  
present and don't show it if not (we can check for a known page from  
the application).

...
  For example, let's say we have the Blog
application. For now we have  
 global
 administration and space administration. We have the rights, the  
 panels and
 the presentation preferences included in the space administration  
 for Blog
 space (this is something fixed). Where should go the other things  
 that the
 Blog administration application wants to include in the  
 administration menu?
 The things that Vincent wants to be hardcoded for now. In the space
 administration page? In another administration page...? And how  
 should I
 read these things? From what kind of objects or documents or  
 whatever else
 may be used? 
1) The space preferences (i.e. rights, preferences, etc) should be  
separated from the applications IMO. It seems better to have a generic  
page that allows to change these space by space rather than delegating  
this to the spaces. Especially since Application doesn't mean there's  
a space for that application. An application is only a set of pages  
right now.

2) For the Blog application what I mean by the admin page for Blog is  
page in the Blog application that allows changing:
- Blog categories (edit, add new ones)
- A link to the Article Class so that admin users can edit the  
stylsheet/template/class definition.

3) So in the left menu of the general admin page, we could hardcode a  
"Blog" link that links to the blog admin page defined in 2) (and only  
display it if the Blog app is present). The same goes for the Panels  
app.

...
  Until now, after discussing with Jv, Thomas and
Sergiu, the idea I  
 made
 about the administration application is that it is a set of wiki  
 pages used
 to administrate a wiki at global and space level (pretty much the  
 same kind
 of application like Panels). But its implementation seems to change  
 the more
 we discuss about it (which is a good thing of course) but now I am  
 really
 confused. 
I don't see what's changing... Could you be more specific?

The only thing I'd like NOT to see is (to continue with the Blog  
example) to have a blog admin page located in the general admin  
application.

Now one question is whether we consider Import/Export, User/Group  
management, Preferences, Panels as 4 applications or not. I think for  
now we should consider them as 2:
* the Admin app: Import/Export, User/Group management, Preferences
* the Panels app

WDYT?

Thanks
-Vincent

...
  Can you help me understand WHAT exactly should I
implement for now?

 Thanks,
 Evelina

 -----Original Message-----
 From: devs-bounces(a)xwiki.org [mailto:devs-bounces@xwiki.org] On  
 Behalf Of
 Vincent Massol
 Sent: Monday, May 19, 2008 1:06 PM
 To: XWiki Developers
 Subject: [xwiki-devs] New Admin Design direction

 Hi,

 Some comments I've discussed with JV about implementing
 http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Design/ImproveWikiAdministration

 I believe we should design it in the following manner:

 * The Admin page is a generic empty shell
 * An XWiki instance is made of applications (admin pages like users/
 groups/configs are part of the admin application too). Examples: Blog,
 Calendar, Panels, etc
 * Each application should be able to contribute admin pages to
 configure/administrate itself. These pages should automatically appear
 in the left menu on the new admin page. Note that this will require
 interface extensions so right now we would hardcode them in the menu.
 * What it means is that the admin page should link to the admin pages
 located in the applications providing them.

 I know we're missing the interface extensions to make this work but
 I'd like that our design for the new admin page works towards this
 goal in mind.

 WDYT?

 Note: This email was prompted by Evelina asking if it was ok to attach
 XARs to be imported in the XWiki.XWikiPeferences page. IMO it's not a
 good thing to do. The XARs should be attached in the ImportExport
 application pages (as it's done now). Now I have no idea how easy or
 hard this is to implement since I haven't dived in the implementation.

 Thanks
 -Vincent 

Re: [xwiki-devs] FW: New Admin Design direction