On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Vincent Massol <vinc...@massol.net> wrote:
> Hi Bryn, > > Thanks again, see below. > > > On 16 May 2016, at 00:40, Bryn Jeffries <bryn.jeffr...@sydney.edu.au> > wrote: > > > > Vincent wrote: > >> You seem to be knowing Confluence which is great, since it’s been more > than > >> 10 years that I haven’t used it myself. > > > > It's been a few years for me also, but I suspect many of the good > features present then are still the most noticeable. > > > >> Indeed, I don’t know why there’s this "Ticket plugin” mentioned. I’ll > check > >> with Caty. XWiki certainly doesn’t have a full ticket extension right > now > >> AFAIK. The closest I can think of is the Task Application: > >> http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Task+Manager+Appli > >> cation > > > > Yes, I looked into this but it felt like a proof of principle rather > than an actively used and maintained product. I ended up going with the > Redmine plugin instead for a while, but it wasn't anything near Jira. > > Yes, it could have some more love for sure ;) However, it’s supposed to be > usable and it’s not competing with dedicated products such as redmine, > jira, etc. Dedicated products will always be better. The goal is that if > your needs are small, you can instal this extension and it’ll do the job > and you don’t need to install another product. > > What we should be doing is integrate with external issue trackers. > > Regarding JIRA for example, we have strong integration with it using our > JIRA macro our our JIRA scripting API. > > > The extensions in XWiki really vary in quality, whereas Confluence has a > lot > >> of very polished plugins. That's at least been my experience, and I > think > >> there's a need to distinguish between high-quality maintained > extensions vs. > >> the more hacky ones. > >> > >> Definitely. I’ve also discussed this with others and it’s time that we > start > >> curating extensions and introduce some “Editor Picks” or “Recommended” > >> extensions. I’ll start this in another thread real soon. > > > > I think this is a smart move. A decent set of flagship plugins could > really set the standard for others. > > > > Also, if you're competing with Confluence, it's important to keep in > mind that it's not just a wiki. The appeal of Confluence is that it's a > great wiki with excellent integration with Atlassian's other (also great) > products like Jira and source code repositories. To appeal to the same > audience you really need to have a strong ecosystem built around the XWiki > platform. > > There’s a difference here. XWiki’s goal is not to compete on the developer > spectrum but more on the general business one, see > http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Drafts/XWiki-vs-Confluence#HIntermsofmarketpositioning > > Now, I personally think that XWiki should have a great appeal to devs > since it’s full programmable and scriptable. > > > The lack of a markup editor in Confluence is a big difference. Might be > >> worth illustrating further. > >> > >> Agreed. Maybe the polyglotism too (ability to use various markup > syntaxes). > > > > Maybe. Sometimes too much choice can be a bad thing. A single really > good markup language is better that multiple similar ones. But being able > to port easily from other systems with different markups is certainly a > good thing. On several occasions I've found myself investing time writing > content in one system, and then years later being unable to move to better > platforms because the markup languages are incompatible and not having the > time to port things over manually. > > > >> > >>> I think the page hierarchy model is rather difference. Confluence makes > >> chaining of child pages very easy, and access restrictions to child > pages is > >> simple to manage. XWiki was a bit clunky by comparison, but that was > for 7.1 > >> and maybe the addition of sub-spaces in more recent versions makes this > >> easier to manage. > >> > >> Could you explain why it’s simpler with Confluence by comparison with, > say, > >> XWiki 7.4.3? I think this now at least as easy if not more now. Same > for access > >> restrictions to children pages. > >> > >> See > http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Features/ContentOrganization > > > > This is a new feature that I haven't tried yet - I'm running a 7.1.1 and > 7.1.2 system. I look forward to upgrading and trying this out soon. > > I’m eager to get your feedback on this! > > > The other big difference, to me, is in documentation. XWiki has > >>> changed a lot over the years, particularly in the API, > >> > >> This is not fully correct. A lot of new APIs have been introduced, > showing the > >> dynamism of the XWiki community indeed. However, we take very seriously > >> backward-compatibility (so seriously that breaking it fails our build > >> automatically ;)). So all that worked are still supposed to work. Do > you have > >> an example that you’ve noticed where it’s not true (it can happen from > time > >> to time when we conscientiously decide to break a recent API that we > think > >> nobody uses) . > > > > Again, I may be out of date here. I've really struggled to get the API > documentation for 7.1. I see that things have been cleaned up a lot at > http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/API but the APIs still > seem to be missing for versions between 5.0 and 7.4.3. Obviously the > solution for me now would be to upgrade. > > Yes, we only maintain documentation for the latest version of XWiki on > xwiki.org (not enough manpower to have decent doc for several versions > ATM). > However, for version 6.2.5 and later, you have a way to mitigate this limitation. You can install the Scripting Documentation Application on your own wiki (see http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Scripting+Documentation+Application). This application is dynamic, it searches and inspects bindings available to scripts in your running wiki, and provides direct access to the documentation of the corresponding Java class behind those bindings. Even scripting services added through custom extensions could be found and if these has been released on xwiki.org maven, their JavaDoc get linked as well. > > and a lot of the material discoverable on the web is out of date. > >> > >> Any example? That would help to fix them. > > > > Again this may be historical rather than present day. I'll certainly > yell if I encounter examples in the future. When I first set about writing > a component I googled around for examples and much of that was for the > older plugin architecture, and I was too new to things to appreciate the > difference. I think the API was also in a state of transition at the time, > so properties available through the wiki context required awkward bridging > classes that didn't make sense to noobs such as me. > > > > Incidentally, I think it could still be easier to write extensions for > XWiki. Writing Groovy components within XWiki pages is neat, but (at least > in 7.1) they don't work until someone manually visits the page a first > time. This means some components stop working when the system is restarted. > It also lacks access to a decent IDE interface to aide writing code - > sometimes I end up copying and pasting between the wiki editor and > Notepad++ so that I can get code formatting and syntax highlighting. > > They do always work actually, even when restarting. The issue is that if > you write in Groovy for example, you need Programming Rights (PR) since the > language can access anything, including the file system and more. You give > PR to a page when a user with PR saves it. And you loose PR when a user > without PR saves the page. So the page will work till someone without PR > saves it. To circumvent this, pages requiring PR could be right-protected > so that only user with PR can edit them for example. > > EDIT: I think you actually meant writing a groovy script to register some > code as a component. Actually we have wiki components for that: > http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/WikiComponent+Module Unless you are using XWiki prior to 4.2 , using Wiki Component is definitely the recommended way to writes Groovy components. Registering components "by hand" from a groovy script has many drawbacks not only the restart one, and you should avoid doing that. The best is of course to write the components in Java, and install them as an extension. > > > > Much of this difference is just a natural outcome of the proprietary vs. > >> open source backgrounds of each system. > >> > >> Well our goal is to be open source and still be good on all fronts! :) > > > > That's an admirable goal, and a formidable undertaking. Good luck! > You've certainly got an impressive product. > > Keep the feedback coming! Even the bad one, we need to learn what we > should improve. > > Thanks! > -Vincent > > _______________________________________________ > users mailing list > users@xwiki.org > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users > Thanks, -- Denis Gervalle SOFTEC sa - CEO _______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
