I'm undecided. As a technical Linux user I prefer case sensitivity, but I can see why this is sometimes unexpected for non-technical users. I'm not sure how you plan to implement this. I know this thread is not about the technical aspects but still I think it's important to consider the cost that this change will imply.
First, even for a case insensitive system, I think it's very important to preserve the case entered by the user. For instance, If I create a user with the alias 'myCoolAlias' then I wouldn't like to see 'mycoolalias' displayed in the UI. Same, if I attach a file named 'myCoolPresentation.odp' then I want to see precisely that name on the list of attachments. So we need to store case sensitive values in the database. The difference from now will be: * when creating an entity: check that there's no other entity that has the same normalized reference (toLowerCase/toUpperCase) * when retrieving an entity: look for normalized references This means we'll have to call toLowerCase/toUpperCase very often so we need proper database indexes. Otherwise we'll have a performance impact. Second, we have lots of places that query the database and since we have to store the raw case-sensitive values then we need to update all this places. Moreover, since it's not about a single field/column I'm not sure we can write a query filter to lower the case automatically. Then we also have a lot of extensions that query the database and that create entities. Those will have to be updated too. Lastly, AFAIK lower case and upper case are locale dependent. The 'lower' query function doesn't have a locale parameter so it depends on the locale the database has been configured with. So there can be cases when a user won't be able to retrieve an entity using some locale dependent lowercase version of the reference because the database computes the lower case differently than what the user expects (because it uses a different locale). Thanks, Marius On Nov 7, 2014 12:34 PM, "Eduard Moraru" <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi users and devs, > > I would like to have your opinion on the topic of case sensitive vs case > insensitive and which one you prefer in XWiki. > > Currently, XWiki is case sensitive. This means the same resource name > (document name, space name, etc) can be written with either small letters > or big letters or a mix. > > Examples: You can have both "Main.Test" and "Main.test" as 2 different > documents. Also, you can have "XWiki.Admin" and "XWiki.admin" as 2 > different users. This also applies to URLs, as "/Main/Test" is different > from "/Main/test" or "/main/test", so all these 3 are different resources. > > Even from this short description, one can already identify possible > problems of this approach. > > From the top 3 operating systems (Linux, Mac an Windows), only Linux is > case sensitive, the other two (more user-focused Operating Systems) are > both case insensitive. > > Since XWiki has one of its main targets the Enterprise users, it is safe to > assume that the correct approach would be to also be more user-focused and > simplify things and avoid confusions by being case insensitive as well. > > Also, a quick search on existing issues validates the need for this > improvement: > http://jira.xwiki.org/issues/?jql=text%20~%20%22case%20insensitive%22 > > What do you think? Is it OK to keep XWiki case sensitive, or would you > prefer it case insensitive? Bring arguments. > > I have also created a jira issue for this idea: > http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-11412 to track it in the future. > > Thanks, > Eduard > _______________________________________________ > devs mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs _______________________________________________ devs mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
