7 Oct
2016
7 Oct
'16
9:34 a.m.
Hi Sergiu,
On 06 Oct 2016, at 17:56, Sergiu Dumitriu
<sergiu(a)xwiki.org> wrote:
On 10/06/2016 11:36 AM, Vincent Massol wrote:
I’ve never said the the app panel should know this. This would be definitely wrong.
Hi Sergiu,
True, I was just presenting another approach, which, by the way, also
has limitations that are making me look for improvements.
I don't agree that the application shouldn't know whether it's suitable
for being displayed or not. Who knows that an extension is too technical
to be displayed? Certainly not the Panels application, On 06 Oct 2016, at 17:30, Sergiu Dumitriu
<sergiu(a)xwiki.org> wrote:
The way I do this for another similar feature, using UIX objects, is to
add two new parameters, "enabled" and "order". When displaying the
extensions for a particular point, I request them ordered by the "order"
parameter, and then manually skip those for which the "enabled"
parameter is set to "false" -- if the parameter is missing, it's
considered enabled by default.
We can define that the order should have a value between 0 and 100, and
each extension can choose it's own relative number, as an expected
percentage, with the actual order depending on which other extensions
are installed and enabled, and their requested order.
Yes but IMO this wouldn’t work here for this use case because the information as to
whether a given app is displayed or not should not come from the UIX itself (the app
doesn’t know that info and shouldn’t set this). It should come from the admin or from the
flavor for this case at hand.
Also I don’t think that modifying the UIX of an app by the Application Panel admin UI is
a good thing. The storage if this info should go in the App Panel config page instead
IMO.
WDYT? and flavors can't
know beforehand all the extensions that may be installed.
I think there may be 2 different use cases. The one I was addressing mostly was the
**default** list of Apps that are visible in the App Panel.
For this I still believe that the Flavor should have the configuration and that the list
of apps visible by **default* don’t depend on the app themselves but depend on the
flavor.
I think that
the application developers are the ones that should decide if their
application is to be displayed by default or not.
I think you’re talking about edge cases where some apps really don’t want to be displayed
in the Panel. For me these apps should probably not even be apps. An example is an app
providing only a wiki macro. This app shouldn’t register as an app at all. And thus it
wouldn’t be displayed in the App Index or App Panel.
For all other apps, I’m personally fine that they appear in the App Panel for
discoverability. Others will contend that some shouldn’t appear. For example the Scheduler
app is an app that I had configured to appear in the App panel for Admins only. Caty
didn't agree for XE. But I’m sure she’d have agreed for a technical flavor where the
Scheduler app is key.
And these are just initial hints, the admins can then
choose to change
the default and manually hide/show/reorder applications.
Now, for the fact that the parameters are stored *only* in the
extension, that does indeed cause several problems:
- modifying them may cause extension upgrade conflicts
- only one global setting, no user or space settings
- flavors can't override these settings
How about this: we define a way of overriding extension parameters using
custom objects:
XWiki.UIExtensionParameterOverridesClass
- extensionPointId
- name
- parameters
extensionPointId and name must match an UIX, and parameters override the
extension's parameters.
Depending on where the object it placed, it can be valid for:
- the whole wiki if placed in XWiki.XWikiPreferences
- a space if placed in <Space>.WebPreferences
- a certain user if placed in XWiki.<UserProfile>
- any other page, and have a way of telling the uix manager that we want
to apply the parameter overrides in that page
- not sure what to do for flavors, is XWiki.XWikiPreferences good, or is
there a flavor-specific configuration page?
How does that sound?
At first sight, sounds complex to me. I don’t think we need this right now. For me we only
need an App Panel-level configuration that’s taken from the flavor.
FTR I’m also open to not adding new apps by default to the App Panel (Edy is also ok with
this) since for me that’s the role of the App Index. Now, I think the App Index could be
more visible (i.e I think we need to make it easier to navigate to various apps without
having to open the drawer, click on Apps Index and then find the app). I can think of
several ways:
* Add the link to the App Index from “More Applications”. Maybe a “All Applications”
label
* Rework the “More Applicatios” even more so that without clicking on “All Applications”
(just by moving the mouse over it) it opens a lightbox displaying all the apps.
* I’d also like to rework the Goto Page (Ctrl+G) to also add the ability to navigate to
apps more easily. Note that this one is not enough since it’s harder to discover.
Now I also agree that a whitelist is interesting (in addition to a blacklist) and that we
should offer the 2 configuration possibilities to users.
Thanks
-Vincent
Thanks
-Vincent
> As a more advanced feature, in PhenoTips we also have a wizard that
> allows enabling/disabling and manually reordering extensions, by
> modifying the extension parameters.
>
> I didn't have time for this yet, but in the future I'd like to add
> support for ordering and enable/disable flags in the core UIX module, so
> that extensions are automatically filtered and ordered.
>
> On 10/05/2016 05:37 AM, Vincent Massol wrote:
>> Hi devs,
>>
>> With the recent introduction of the Applications Index (see
http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Application+Index+Appl…) we
need to agree on a few things.
>>
>> In the past we had:
>> * We wanted all new app that you installed to automatically be visible in the
Applications Panel
>> * This is why the Applications Panel config had a blacklist (and not a white
list)
>>
>> What we’ve done:
>> * We add the Applications Index
>> * We removed some apps from the Applications Panel. Namely: Invitation, Panels,
Scheduler, User Directory and Tour applications. this was done using hardcoded blacklist
xobjects in PanelsCode.ApplicationsPanelConfiguration.
>>
>> The need:
>> * We need to remove this hack. It’s not normal for the Panels module to know all
the apps that shouldn’t be listed in it!
>>
>> Proposal:
>> * Replace the blacklist configuration of the Applications Panel by a whitelist
one
>> * When a new app is installed, list it in the Applications Index but don’t add it
to the Applications Panel
>> * If an admin wants to add this new for his users, he’ll need to add it in the
Admin UI for the Applications Panel.
>>
>> WDYT?
>>
>> Thanks
>> -Vincent
>>
>
--
Sergiu Dumitriu
http://purl.org/net/sergiu
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