Re: [xwiki-devs] Annotation plugin

Hi Antoine, antoine SEILLES wrote: If you want to code the annotation feature exactly as the comment feature, you need to have to look at the "commentadd" action in "WEB-INF/struts-config.xml" and at the related classes like "CommentAddAction" and the places where they show up, like XWikiRightServiceImpl.java, and then to introduce the same elements for the Annotation classes. That's not necessarily the simplest thing to do, though. Another option is to use Groovy or Velocity scripts directly in wiki pages for introducing the annotation feature. For example, for the help desk we're developing, the answers to questions asked are added as XWiki objects through Groovy scripts, even though the feature is similar to the XWikiComment feature as well. The main advantage I see in using scripts in wiki pages instead of external templates is that it's then easier to evolve those scripts collaboratively. You can see the way it's coded from [1], and the add "?viewer=code" at the end of the URLs for viewing the code. [1] http://club.mandriva.com/xwiki/bin/view/ITS/ Introducing annotation capabilities to XWiki is very relevant in various contexts. I would say we should think about the capabilities of the plugin a bit more before developing it. Here are some considerations: 1) do we want to have the possibility to annotate annotations? And also to tag annotations? If yes, having each annotation in a separate document would probably be a better design. Personally, I think that'd be a good feature to support tagging for annotations, letting users describe some annotations as "critique" for instance, or rating some annotations through the rating plugin when one will be available. 2) what about rights? That may be handy to have various access rights for annotations? Imagine a teacher and her students annotating a document. The teacher may wish to keep her annotation private while the students collaboratively annotate the same piece of document... 3) choosing a name would help packaging the plugin into a unique Space (not sure about the guidelines we chose there eventually, but having all the wiki pages for a given feature in a single space increases lisibility, I think) 4) how will we manage annotations on evolving documents? If the structure remains the same, that may be ok, but what will happen when a user moves an entire paragraph to a different position? Do you know if there has been some work on this? I propose we use the following page for refining the design of the feature: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Design/AnnotationFeature That may be easier to give input to the plugin development once we'll have a common view on what we aim at. Note that annotation capabilities also share some aspects with the PSEW prototype, that allows for external annotations of wiki pages (external in the sense that annotations are then stored in a completely distinct database): http://nepomuk-eclipse.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/PSEW Cheers Stéphane -- Stéphane Laurière slauriere(a)xwiki.com XWiki http://www.xwiki.com http://concerto.xwiki.com http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org