16 Nov
2007
16 Nov
'07
6:03 p.m.
Hi,
First: I am rather new to XWiki.
I am checking XWiki's scripting capabilities. The possibility of using
Groovy and Velocity directly within pages is a nice feature. But I was
wondering if there was an easier way to integrate dynamic contents
into
wiki pages. Groovy is easier than Java but you still
need advanced
programming skills to use it. In my opinion staying at the Groovy
level is
not user-friendly when you think that wikis are aimed
for a broad
audience. Most advanced wikis (TWiki or Deki Wiki for example) give
simple
scripting syntaxes thought for users with no
programming skills.
Is there anything like that foreseen for XWiki?
The same applies to the form ant template system. It seems impossible
for
a normal user to use them. I was surprised to find the
how-tos for
these
features in the developer guide, not the user guide.
Thanks,
William
Hi William. I'm new to XWiki as well :)
I'm no dev, but I would argue that even if velocity or groovy are a
little awkward, it's better to learn a standardized scripting language
than have to pick up a new proprietary scripting syntax for every wiki
project (or any other application that stands to benefit from scripting)
I use. Such proprietary scripting languages are generally severely
restricted. It's not terribly difficult to do simple things under
groovy or velocity, and it's often impossible to do complicated things
under proprietary syntaxes. So I'm personally satisfied with the
current system.
As far as what goes into which guide, the lines are a bit blurry. The
website uses "dev" in the sense of developing a customized 2nd
generation wiki application/system. This means creating your own forms
and classes which you provide to users so they may add/edit content.
Once a "user" starts editing/creating
classes/templates/forms/macros/code snippets they graduate to the
classification of "dev" for a particular XWiki project instance. The
website designates this "dev" classification as separate from the
"community" space, which is provided for development of the XWiki
project at the sourcecode level. (The fact that the sourcecode
development mailing list is called devs(a)xwiki.org makes this nice and
confusing if I do say so).
Paul D. Grodt
TECORE Wireless Systems