[xwiki-dev] Votes and oppinions on Google Docs integration specifics

[Ludovic Dubost]

Radu Danciu a écrit :
> Cheers guys!
>
> During my research of the way Google does stuff with their Gdata 
> Protocol, I've come across some decisions that have to be made (more 
> like priorities - what should work first and what to improve later).
>
> First off - means of authentication. In order to use gdata, you need a 
> google account (gmail counts as one). As an alternative, you can, upon 
> invitation, view a document without having to log in (as stated here 
> <http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47597&topic=9378> 
> ). That would be a good way of interaction with visitors who don't 
> have editing permissions (as of yet I've not found a way to send 
> invitations using the API, but  there should be one... I hope). Then 
> comes the account part:
>
>     * A wiki can request that each editor use his own account to edit.
>       That would mean:
>           o + being able to collaboratively edit documents (the
>             service allows for multi-user edit) <still requires
>             invitation>
>           o - require a download to my account, edit, send back to
>             wiki kind of work flow (much like download to desktop,
>             edit, upload) !! I might be wrong on this, needs further
>             research since there is the collaborative side of things !!
>           o more + / - to come (if anybody can think of other things
>             to list here, please do)
>     * Any one wiki instance admin can create a google account and use
>       it as a generic wiki acount. That would mean:
>           o - not being able to edit collaboratively (might not even
>             be able to edit different documents at the same time - not
>             sure if Google allows multiple log-ins per account)
>           o + edit in place
>           o - limit of 200 spreadsheets / 5000 documents or images per
>             account (would be ok for a small to medium sized wiki, but
>             a larger one would seriously suffer especially when it
>             comes to spreadsheets)
>           o more + / - to come (again, any ideas are welcome additions
>             to the general picture)
>
Another +/- is that using only one account, will limit the ability to 
handle security.
I think one reasonable approach is to have users enter their google 
acount in the user page and then use this account to transfer the 
document to and launch invitations. This might not be easy if there are 
no APIs. It might be needed to reverse engineer the protocol used to 
send invitations.

One another thing to investigae is the single sign on API available in 
the Google Apps version of Google docs. This might allow to more tightly 
integrate users.

> I'd like to take this occasion to ask you, the devs (and users) of 
> xwiki what you would like to see from Google Docs Integration 
> (prioritize). I'd really appreciate knowing what the expectations are. 
> Also, any upsides or downsides to the issue of authentication are 
> welcome into discussion .
For me the most important feature I'd like to get from Google Docs is:

Feature 1 - Publish from Google Docs a google docs document and publish 
it to XWiki easily
Feature 2 - Attach a document in XWiki from Google Docs
Feature 3 - Create  an attachment document in XWiki, open it in Google 
Docs (with possible collaboration), save it back to XWiki, optional 
delete on Google Docs
Feature 4 - Use Google docs to transform documents into HTML (with an 
xwiki cache)
Feature 5 - Edit an XWiki document collaboratively in Google docs 
seemlessly (in an iframe or js embedded html)
Feature 6 - Edit a wiki page using Google docs and transform it back to 
wiki syntax
Feature 7 - Embed a spreadsheet inside a wiki document
Feature 8 - Use Google docs to calculate spreadsheets and graphs from 
XWiki Tables

> Another issue is the fact that the gdata api provided by google will 
> have to be integrated into the xwiki trunk (I'd like to know how this 
> should be done).
>
Vincent can answer that.

> If possible, take some time to read the references bellow and others 
> related, and comment upon what should be done and how.
>
> Thank you for your time and patience,
> Radu Danciu
>
> References:
> http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47597&topic=9378 
> <http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47597&topic=9378> 
> <http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=47597&topic=9378>
> http://docs.google.com/support/spreadsheets/bin/answer.py?answer=37603
> http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=37560&topic=8613 
> <http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=37560&topic=8613>
>
> http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/client-java.html
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs_&_Spreadsheets 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs_&_Spreadsheets>
>
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-- 
Ludovic Dubost
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