Re: [xwiki-devs] New WYSIWYG editor and other syntaxes

Hi, On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Pascal Voitot <pascal.voitot.dev(a)gmail.com > On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 11:36 AM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> > > > > > On Jan 17, 2009, at 10:54 AM, Pascal Voitot wrote: > > > > > Some questions arising in my head: > > > do you want to make the WYSIWYG the cornerstone of XWiki online > > > editing or > > > is it only the XWiki2.0 syntax editor? > > > do you want to make multi-syntax a key feature of XWiki or is it > > > only a > > > facility provided so that people can use easily XWiki and when they > > > are used > > > to it, they will naturally begin to use XWIki2.0 syntax? > > > > > > If WYSIWYG is used only with XWiki2.0 syntax, it might look like you > > > are > > > strongly encouraging people to use XWIki2.0 syntax instead of other > > > syntaxes. Is it a good or bad strategy? I don't know... to be > > > discussed :) > > > > IMO we must strongly encourage people to use the xwiki 2.0 syntax and > > the other syntaxes are only a facility (at least for now and the > > foreseeable future IMO). Reasons: > > 1) it's hard to fix all parsers for all syntaxes > > > It might even become crazy to support... > > *One wiki to rule them all, one wiki to find them, one wiki to bring them > all, and in the darkness bind them.* > > We know the end of the story :) So, Maybe, it would be better to propose an > nice API to add a new syntax parser. Some people might be interested in > developping the parser for their own needs and provide it to the community. > > > > > > 2) other syntaxes are all way less powerful than the xwiki syntax. > > > for this point, I trust you :) > > > > > > 3) there are issues with links in other syntaxes. For ex the ability > > to link to multi wikis which doesn't exist in most syntaxes so they'll > > only offer a very small subset of xwiki linking features and you > > wouldn't be able to link between wikis. Unless we extend other > > syntaxes of course (need to find syntax for doing that and write link > > parsers for that) > > > If you extend other syntaxes, I'm not sure their creator will be happy > and you won't be compliant anymore with the real syntax. > The problem is also that other syntaxes will continue their evolution. If > you want to keep compliance, you will have to support these modifications. > It's an endless and non-sense work... > Being a "meta-something" (meta-wiki in our case) is always nice on paper > but > it's rarely a possible project... > Finally, xwiki2.0 syntax might be the most powerful syntax today but > tomorrow, will it be true?Could it happen that the wysiwyg proposes a > feature for a specific syntax that is not supported by xwiki2.0? > > > > > > 4) the new wysiwyg only works well with the 2.0 syntax > > > It could evolve progressively so that this dependency is lazier and so that > one could add another syntax to the wysiwyg, deactivate unsupported > features > from the interface etc... > > > > > > 5) We'd need to write syntax renderers for all syntaxes if we want > > them to be equal to the xwiki 2.0 one but if we do so then we have the > > issues raised in 2). > > > > As time progresses we'll probably improve other syntax support but > > right now we must encourage people to use the xwiki 2.0 syntax as much > > as possible and consider the other syntaxes as migration strategies IMO. > > > > I think you are writing "xwiki", not "xwiki for confluence users" for > example... So it's certainly better to promote your syntax which > corresponds > to your vision, your architecture and your way of thinking... > But to bring compatibility with other syntaxes, I don't know what's the > best > way: to write converters or to support the syntax directly in the editor... > The second option is quite sexy but it might be impossible to support. I > would say: "This is a marketing choice! What other syntax do we need to > support so that people tend to use our product and increase our market > share?"... Oh sorry I forgot this is an opensource project :)... But maybe, > you could think about supporting one or 2 other well-chosen syntaxes > which are commonly used to attract some people to XWiki and bring their new > ideas to our community! > > Pascal > > I tend to agree with Pascal on this, on paper having our WYSIWYG editor support every imaginable syntax is quite sexy, but in practice it means far too big of a workload + it doesn't highlight all the work we've done to make the XWiki 2.0 syntax ine of the most powerful wiki syntaxes available as of today. Making the new WYSIWYG editor work fine for the new syntax is already a heavy task - and we're using our great new parser! So with parsers we know less about and that might be buggy the tast of supporting them would become daunting. Thus it seems to me that both from a marketing PoW (pushing the new XWiki 2.0 syntax) and the technical one (using our development resources wisely) it's better to tell our users that other syntaxes will work only with the wiki editor for now and that they need to convert them to the XWiki 2.0 syntax to use the new editor (conversion works already, to the extent of available parsers). We can re-open the discussion in the future if demands for other syntaxes support arises at a later stage. As of today, I think we'd better not do it. Guillaume > > > > > > WDYT? > > > > Thanks > > -Vincent > > > > > Pascal > > > > > > On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Vincent Massol > > > <vincent(a)massol.net> > > > > >> Hi, > > >> > > >> Just realized that our new WYSIWYG editor will only work fine with > > >> our > > >> xwiki 2.0 syntax since other wiki syntaxes are less powerful and > > >> won't > > >> be able to express some complex structures (like embedding a document > > >> inside a table cell) or simply like styling a portion of text. > > >> > > >> Of course this is not a problem of the wysiwyg editor per see but in > > >> practice it means that users using it for other syntaxes when they > > >> save will get a different rendered result. > > >> > > >> So I"m tempted to say that our GWT editor will only work for the > > >> xwiki > > >> 2.0 syntax and that for the other syntaxes users will have to use the > > >> wiki editor. > > >> > > >> WDYT? > > >> > > >> Thanks > > >> -Vincent > > _______________________________________________ > > devs mailing list > > devs(a)xwiki.org > > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs > > > _______________________________________________ > devs mailing list > devs(a)xwiki.org > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs > -- Guillaume Lerouge Product Manager - XWiki Skype ID : wikibc http://guillaumelerouge.com/