When XWiki renders a document, the interactions between the Groovy,
Velocity, and Wiki (Radeox?) syntax processing can lead to unexpected and
undesirable behavior. There have been posts on this list in the past where
this issue has been discussed. However, I'm not aware that any consensus has
emerged as to how to deal with these problems.
To summarize, here are a few of the issues that I'm aware of:
* Getting XWiki to render a bit of text without doing any syntax processing
on it can be difficult. For example, the {pre} ... {/pre} markup turns off
XWiki syntax processing, but not Groovy processing.
* The # symbol is used both to do numbered lists and is also used for Groovy
processing. If a user wants to create a numbered list and forgets to put a
space after the #, he can run into trouble. The following example will cause
a stack dump:
#bring coffee
#include doughnuts
* Code samples on a Wiki page sometimes don't render correctly, due to
conflicts with Velocity syntax processing. The following C/C++ code sample
results in a runtime stack dump:
{code}
#include <stdio.h>
...
{code}
* Groovy and Velocity both use $varname syntax. I think I've read some posts
in the past where this was an issue -- although I can't come up with any
examples at the moment.
* A usability issue: Most XWiki tags ({table}, {code}, etc.) come in pairs.
The closing tag has no slash. For example: {table} ... {table}. However,
the {pre} tag does have a closing slash: {pre} ... {/pre}. This
inconsistency is annoying and causes difficulties for new users.
* A significant usability issue for Windows users: Pathnames contain
backslashes (\). XWiki uses the backslash as an escape character. So
attempting to put a UNC path like \\myserver\myshare\mydoc.txt in an XWiki
document triggers an XWiki runtime exception. Boy, is that frustrating for
new XWiki users. The solution is to wrap the path in {pre} .. {/pre}, but
the error message gives the user no clue what the problem was, much less how
to correct it.
Here are some proposals for discussion:
1. {pre} ... {/pre} should turn off ALL syntax processing of its contents.
2. {code} ... {code} should turn off ALL syntax processing, except for
syntax coloring.
3. {pre} should allow {pre} as a closing tag.
4. Consider requiring users to explicitly enable Groovy/Velocity processing
for selected Wiki documents as needed. In the page editor, provide two
checkboxes: "Perform Groovy Processing" and "Perform Velocity Processing".
The user could separately enable either Groovy or Velocity processing, or
both. People who enable them would presumably be in a better position to
deal with the kinds of syntax conflicts that would occur.
5. Provide more user-friendly error messages when a Groovy or Velocity
processing exception occurs. Show the Wiki source line that caused the
problem.
I haven't opened a JIRA issue for this yet, because I'm not sure how best to
word it. But I think this is a high-priority issue that should be carefully
addressed before the 1.0 release. This may be an issue that warrants a page
on the xwiki.org developer site. I'll be glad to start one if the developers
desire it -- perhaps here:
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/Discussions
Stephen
I've noticed that the version number (correctly) gets bumped for
every new comment or image upload. However, I would like a means to
show a list of revisions for _just_ content changes, i.e. exlude the
revisions which were created for new comments and attachments. How
would I do this in some velocity code?
Thanks,
Matt
Greetings,
I am new to xwiki and was wondering how some of the multi-company features of xwiki work. From my readings it sounds like one must create a separate mysql db for each new company/tenant. If this is true would this not require a seperate database connection pools for each company?
Are Oracle or Postgresql supported? I know with these two databases one can create database namespaces (something mysql does not have). This would allow the same jdbc driver to reference mulitple namespaced schemes and thus use the same pool.
Anyway, any thoughts would be apprciated. I am looking to setup xwiki in a multi company setup and was looking for some insight.
Thanks,
Sam
---------------------------------
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Here's an issue I feel should be addressed before the 1.0 release:
Create a wiki page with links like the following:
[Images: Good or Bad?]
[C++ Examples]
XWiki renders the first link like this:
<a class="wikicreatelink" href=""><span class="wikicreatelinktext">Images:
Good or Bad?</span><span class="wikicreatelinkqm">?</span></a>
It's completely broken. The second link is rendered like this:
<span class="wikilink"><a href="/xwiki/bin/view/Sandbox/C+++Examples">C++
Examples</a></span>
XWiki should be able to gracefully handle Wiki links with non alpha-numeric
characters.
Here are my thoughts on a solution to the problem:
1. When rendering a Wiki link, XWiki could strip out all non-alphanumeric
characters. Thus, a link like [Images: Good or Bad?] would render as <a
href="/.../ImagesGoodorBad">Images: Good or Bad?</a>. Benefits:
Straightforward to implement. Yields nice clean document names. Drawbacks:
Presents backwards compatibility problems; several different Wiki links
could map to the same document name.
2. XWiki could perform URL encoding on the Wiki links. Benefits: Better
backwards compatibility (I think). Drawbacks: Yucky document names.
Perhaps there are other solutions somewhere in between. My personal
preference is #1. Backwards compatibility could perhaps be addressed with a
configuration option switch.
I created a Jira issue for this: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-188
Thoughts?
Stephen
Here is a status on the development towards the next release, which
should be the one of the very last release before 1.0.
The following major feature have been added to the current SVN version
Thanks to the Summer of Code we have now
- a WYSIWYG Editor
- a Chart Wizard
- a new Query Language
Additionnally we have:
- a new title field and different rendering of document names in links
and in the header
- a backlinks feature (activated using xwiki.backlinks=1 in xwiki.cfg)
- a custom mapping feature allowing to store XWiki Objects in flat
tables for advanced developments
- new storage of XWiki classes definition in the xwikidoc table instead
of multiple tables
- the XWiki Preferences now use a custom mapping for better performance
- lot's of bug fixes, incl. access through proxies, issues with the
multilingual feature
- an import/export API (for backups and for XWiki applications) which is
needed for the Import/Export XWiki page
- improvements to the URL scheme which will allow to reduce the number
of elements in the xwiki URLs (currently some XWiki features still need
xwiki to run on the /xwiki/ path)
These are a lot of new features which needs to be well tested before
become fully usable. Most of the features can be deactivated or are
backwards compatible.
We would need some help from the XWiki community to test this new
version and report any issues in JIRA ( http://jira.xwiki.org ).
Except for the preferences storage and the xwiki classes definition
storage, it is possible to revert to an older version even if running
the new version. Now it is highly recommended to backup your database
and test with care on production data.
I'm planning to provide a test build for developers, but if you want to
test right away, you will need to build XWiki from the SVN code.
The plan for getting XWiki to 1.0 is:
- bug fixing
- bug fixing
- documentation
- very small missing features
- bug fixing
- documentation
- revamp of the XWiki interface according to the Usability report done
during the summer
- bug fixing
- documentation
Any help or comments is welcome.
For now it would be usefull to identify bugs that would absolutely need
to be fixed before releasing this version to replace 0.9.840. The
objective is to provide an improvement versus 0.9.840 and allow working
with the new features, not necessarily to provide a perfect version.
Thanks and happy testing
Ludovic
--
Ludovic Dubost
XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/
Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/
XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com
Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic
What about adding a permanent XWiki bounties section, to somehow
perpetuate the idea of the Google Summer of Code in the fall?
This page pointed out by Marc gives a structured bounty process:
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/community/bounties/document_view
I'd be happy to sponsor a few ones if this makes sense to you too.
By the way, since the move from SourceForge to ObjectWeb, is there still
a way to make donations to the project?
Stéphane
build.xml builds the exo fileset with the xwiki-normal.cfg into the
xwiki-N.N.N.war and xwiki.war targets and vice versa into
xwiki-exo-N.N.N.war.
Jim
--
Jim Stuttard
