Thanks for
your feedback. I would be glad to know a bit more about what you
were looking for, which wikis you tried and what made you choose XWiki
rather than another system. This would help us understand better what makes
XWiki stand out and what it lacks compared with other platforms.
If you've got a little time, do you think you could tell us a bit about
that?
Many thanks in advance,
Guillaume
Ok, here's a small list of reasons why I chose Xwiki and not some other
wiki.
Before I begun searching for suitable wiki, I gathered a list of
requirements that a wiki must have.
Wikis that I tested or studied were: MediaWiki, TikiWiki, Xwiki and
Confluence. Maybe some others too, but I don't remember ;)
Here is that list and how different wikis fulfill those requirements:
Requirement 1: Ability to transclude pages and sections of pages in other
pages
MediaWiki: Yes, support page transcluding natively and section transcluding
can be added with plugin
Xwiki: Supports page transcluding. Section macro was easy to do, and I got
to do it just the way I like it :)
Confluence: I think it supports transcluding. Not tested it though.
Requirement 2: Support for hierarchical information ( tree-like )
MediaWiki: Very bad. Can be achieved using categories, but because Category
is a namespace, category names must be unique which was unacceptable in
mycase.
Xwiki: Very flexible. Namespaces ( Spaces in Xwiki ) are easy to create and
pages can be ordered hierarchically using page's parent -field.
Requirement 3: Support for content localization/translation
Mediawiki: None. AFAIK every language needs it's own Wiki.
Xwiki: Built-in. Creating translated content is easy. Functions to retrieve
translations still needs work, but are good enough to get the job done.
Requirement 4: Flexible, easy to maintain user rights
Mediawiki: User right management very restricted. Better with plugins but
still poor.
Xwiki: Superb! Very easy, yet powerful way to handle user rights. I really
liked that user right has 3 options: allow, deny, neutral. This combined
with user groups and spaces makes user rights management very enjoyable.
TikiWiki: Frustratingly detailed. Has some very powerful features, but list
of about 100 different user right parameters is very frustrating. (This
opinion is based on very quick tests)
Requirement 5: Ability make offline HTML dumps of wiki content
MediaWiki: Possible (maybe with a plug-in, I don't remember)
Xwiki: Supported natively. Yet, I decided to make my own XML Dump program
which fetches content through XML/RPC interface.
And now a list of pros and cons for every wiki I tested:
Mediawiki:
+ Widely used, lots of help available
+ lots of plugins
- hierarchical information support very bad
- user right management limited and hard to comprehend
TikiWiki:
+ Lots of features
- User interface looks clumsy and is difficult to use ( maybe because I
tested Xwiki just before this ;)
- User rights management is overwhelming
Confluence: ( not tested, opinions based on what I read about it)
+ seems finalized
+ used widely in enterprises and universities
+ XML/RPC interface
- PRICE
Xwiki:
+ Very slick UI
+ Macros / Programming capabilities
+ XML/RPC interface
+ User rights management
+ customer support
- Seems in many ways incomplete/work in progress
- Documention is scattered across the internets / help is very hard to find
using Google. Most searches end up in Xwiki JIRA-pages.
- Xwiki documentation pages seem disorientating. Even if I know theres some
useful info there, it takes me 15mins to find it. (DevGuide,
dev.xwiki.org,
xwiki.org/Features)
- Example:
http://xoffice.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/CodeBase/XmlRpcProxy and
http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/XMLRPC, so similar, yet in
totally different places
The XmpRpcProxy page was created after you sent your first mail. I
published that page, as a result of your mail, so that it potentially
helps you. As you can see the notes in the page, it is only a draft.
When completed(fully maps the xml-rpc model&api) it will be linked/added
to the platform page.
- Scandinavian characters in pageIds don't seem to
work
I hope these lists are helpful to you. Despite some criticism I presented
here, you have developed an amazing wiki. I think you should focus a little
more on making documentation easy to find and read even for someone who is
just starting to code or otherwise noob (such as me ;). Now it gives an
impression that you have to be Linux-expert/super-coder/uber-nerd to be able
to set up wiki and program it (which you don't need to be, it's actually
quite simple).
Best regards,
Ari
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