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

20 May 2008

On May 20, 2008, at 11:14 AM, Evelina Slatineanu wrote:

...
  One proposal is to make the panels part of XE (not
application  
 anymore,
 since they have dependencies in XE) and move the PanelWizard in the
 Administration application (since this one will contain PanelWizard  
 for both
 wiki and space level, so there is no point for the PanelWizard to  
 exist
 outside administration). WDYT? 
I'm not sure. I'd prefer we go the opposite way. There's nothing IMO  
that forces us to make Panels compulsory and I'd rather see it as an  
application. Right now there are dependencies in Core/XE because we  
don't have IX but that should go away later on.

More generally speaking I'd really like that Core/XE is an empty shell  
in the future, i.e. completely empty and that XWiki instances are  
built by adding applications. The Panels are one such application but  
I can envision other navigation/menu applications. People who build  
these new apps should be able to use them without using the Panels app.

Of course, when we have the Application Manager which will allow users  
to choose their apps the first time they start XWiki we will display  
the Panels app proeminently.

WDYT?

Thanks
-Vincent

...
  And yes, I'm +1 for the admin app to contain
users/groups, rights,
 import/export, presentation, panelwizard.

 Thanks,
 Evelina

 -----Original Message-----
 From: devs-bounces(a)xwiki.org [mailto:devs-bounces@xwiki.org] On  
 Behalf Of
 Vincent Massol
 Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 10:20 AM
 To: XWiki Developers
 Subject: Re: [xwiki-devs] FW: New Admin Design direction

 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  _______________________________________________
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