[xwiki-devs] GSoc 2011: idea "Auto Completion in Content Editors" (updated)

Dear Marius Florea and Anca Luca: I am James Xu and I want to contribute to xwiki community through GSoc project. I am interested in working on the idea "Auto Completion in Content Editors". I choose this idea for two reasons: First, I knew Xwiki since 2009, and that is the first time to use xwiki as wiki system in our lab, and I think it's time to give something back to xwiki. Second, the idea "Auto Completion in Content Editors" attracts me a lot. I have done some projects related to autocompletion before. the first project is to implement an autocompletion feature for search input form for a Web search system of our lab; the second is to research how to aggregate widgets for a mashup system, and wired all them up through an autocompletion algorithm. Though they are different from this idea, they give me some general ideas for autocompletion, and I want to extend autocompletion function to the content editors based on the kowledge gained from the previous projects and research. Here are my understanding of the requirements of this idea, and I hope you can give me more tips and feedbacks: For xwiki editor: - Implements autocompletion function for content editor, for example, when user want add link to their wiki page, they first type"[[", and then the autocompletion function will run to give him the suggestion of some documents begin with the charactor he types in, the list will narrowed when he types more. another example can be autosuggest to the attachment link. - Auto completion for some syntax like eclipse HTML editor. for example,if user type"{{" which is the syntax for xwiki macros, then it should suggest him a list of macros name like "box, code..." when user select one, if say "box", it will insert to xwiki the following: "{{box cssClass="" title="" width=""}} {{/box}}" , user should not remember what the attributes for the macros, and would not to close the tag after a long input. what should I do is to find out which syntax can be improved by such kind of autocompletion, and what is the interaction between the editor and the user. For xwiki WYSIWYG editor: - Supply the same function as what we have done in xwiki editor, and then translate automatically into what should it look like for end users. For example,when user finnish the box macro, it should be transalted to visualized box module for user, as well as when user type //word//, it will shows up '*word*'. I have almost 4 years web development experiences, php for 3 years, and java for 2 years. I have some knowledge in using SSH(Strust2+spring+hibernate) as java web framework. I am also practiced in javascript/css/html,and have more than 3 year development experiences. I use dojo for almost 4 years since version 0.9, and jquery for 2 years, I am starting to use GWT this year, but I think I would be a quick learner based on the knowledge I gained from the other two js toolkits. Look forward to your feedbacks. -- Best wishes, 许凌志(James Xu) MOE KLINNS Lab and SKLMS Lab, Xi'an Jiaotong University Department of Computer Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University