7 Oct
2016
7 Oct
'16
12:45 a.m.
Guys, remember that we now have an Application Index, where you can browse
and discover all the relevant installed extensions. So this part of
responsibility should no longer be handled by the Apps Panel (since it
never was capable to do so anyway).
Applications will still have to provide either an UIX or a descriptor (with
name, icon and homepage), but IMO that should be targeting the Application
Index and not the App Panel. The Application Index will be the one going
through all applications and listing them. However, the App Panel should
only go through a list from the configuration (either set by the admin or
the current wiki, see my previous mention about per-user Apps Panels) and
only display the apps in that list.
I have 2 examples/analogies that I can think of when apps are automatically
added to your "desktop": on an operating system (i.e. windows, etc.; but
even there you have a checkbox in the installer to not do that) and in
Android OS (where the just installed app is added to one of your screens,
but can be removed). However, for an implementation solution, I find it
counterproductive/counterintuitive to have to manage a blacklist of *all*
the installed apps, except 2-3 that you want to be displayed, instead of
managing a whitelist with *only* the apps you want to see.
Going along these lines, I propose that, instead of automatically listing
all app UIXs and then have to blacklist, we try to find a way (listener?)
to just *add* an application to the whitelist automatically, when it is
installed, so that the admin can remove it if he does not want it there
(like removing a link from desktop or from you Android OS screens, but you
can still find the app in the App Index, later on).
P.S.: All this talk takes us back to the Application Descriptor topic that
we keep avoiding and keep trying to find quirky ways to work around it.
Thanks,
Eduard
On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 6:56 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu <sergiu(a)xwiki.org> wrote:
On 10/06/2016 11:36 AM, Vincent Massol wrote:
Hi Sergiu,
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.
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
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?
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, and flavors can't
know beforehand all the extensions that may be installed. I think that
the application developers are the ones that should decide if their
application is to be displayed by default or not.
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?
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+Application/) 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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