Hi Miroslav,

> On 21 Apr 2017, at 15:05, Miroslav Galajda <miroslav.gala...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi, let me enter into this conversion.
> Some time ago I've asked for help how to solve problem with diacritics (or
> accents) in page names when creating new pages so that the have
> url-friendly names. You can search for "strip accents from page name used
> in url" in xwiki users mailing list. I've got no hint or solution from
> xwiki community till today.
> 
> I've come with solution that ensures for simple users, creating
> url-friendly names without requiring them to think about the concept of the
> page name or page title. They simple enter the desired human readably page
> name, and in the code behind of the page creation, I have made some
> modifications in createinline.vm to hook into page creation process. The
> modifications are mainly javascript based, where I've attache to submit
> event of the "form#create", where I replace the entered "title" with the
> one for url-friendly. And for url-friendly name I've used this javascript
> based solution on https://pid.github.io/speakingurl/.
> I've integrated this principle also into page creation process of FAQ and
> Blog applications, which we are using in our xwiki installation.
> 
> It would be nice if you could integrate this principle into xwiki so that
> everyone can have nice url-friendly urls without worring about it. It is
> also suitable for english speaking users. You don't have to worry about
> entering spaces or other non-url allowed characters, which make url look
> ugly.

That looks very nice!

One way forward I could think about:
* We provide some Create script service to return a URL-friendly string. We 
introduce a component role for this. We refactor createinline.vm to use it and 
to display the URL.
* You could then contribute your code as an extension that we make available on 
extensions.xwiki.org for users to install
* We decide later on if we want to bundle it by default

If we don’t agree about displaying the URL by default all the time then an 
option is to introduce a UIX in createinline.vm for that. And this could be 
implemented in your extension too for example or by default in XWiki (possibly 
with an Admin setting).

WDYT?

Thanks
-Vincent

> 
> Thank you
> 
> Best regards
> Miroslav Galajda
> 
> On 21 April 2017 at 14:02, Vincent Massol <vinc...@massol.net> wrote:
> 
>> 
>>> On 21 Apr 2017, at 13:52, Marius Dumitru Florea <
>> mariusdumitru.flo...@xwiki.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 2:16 PM, Vincent Massol <vinc...@massol.net>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi Caty,
>>>> 
>>>>> On 21 Apr 2017, at 12:44, Ecaterina Moraru (Valica) <vali...@gmail.com
>>> 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Let's see what variants we have:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1. Instead of displaying "Title", display the "Name" instead.
>>>>> This won't solve anything. There is no difference between Page Name and
>>>>> Page Title for the normal users. Seeing "Name" instead of "Title", will
>>>> not
>>>>> stop the users to enter spaces if they want, so the URL will still have
>>>>> those spaces. We don't force the Page Names to trim spaces.
>>>>> 
>>>>> One quick solution here is indeed to use "URL" label instead of "Name".
>>>> For
>>>>> the reasons Vincent mentioned this might not end up in the product for
>>>> now,
>>>> 
>>>> What did I mention? :) What’s preventing us from having it in the
>> product
>>>> rather soon than later (except workload ofc)?
>>>> 
>>>>> so you will need to do some custom development (changing some
>>>> translations)
>>>>> to have this change. If you want to be "hackish" you can even change
>> the
>>>>> translation for "Title" to "URL" instead and hope that your users will
>>>>> enter shorter URLs (since we generate the name from the title).
>>>>> 
>>>>> Displaying just Name / URL, means users will still have to go and
>> change
>>>>> the title manually.
>>>> 
>>>> This could be better (with URL name) since when you create a page you’re
>>>> offered the ability to change the title after you click Create.
>>>> 
>>>>> The only way to cut a step in the flow is to
>>>>> autogenerate the page names (which we currently do). But for your use
>>>> case
>>>>> you shoyld write a shorting/trimming algorithm, but this is custom,
>> since
>>>>> you mentioned you want just the initials and no spaces, etc.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 2. Displaying both "Title" and "Name". This will create confusion and
>>>> need
>>>>> for explanations.
>>>> 
>>>> This is not exactly what is suggested either by Vishal nor by me :) What
>>>> we suggested is to let the user enter the URL name and title.
>>>> 
>>>> Actually and to be more precise what I was suggesting was to continue to
>>>> let the user enter the title but to show the generated URL as it’s done
>> in
>>>> AWM. And, importantly to allow the user to change the last part of the
>> URL
>>>> (it would change the page name).
>>>> 
>>>>> That's why we display these options just for advanced and
>>>>> long-time users of XWiki, since they are used to the concepts.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Yes but URLs don't need an advanced user to understand the concept and I
>>>> agree with Vishal that we’re now causing a very large number of pages to
>>>> have %25 in their URLs by default which is quite bad… Of course someone
>> can
>>>> spend their time monitoring what users are doing and renaming pages
>>>> thereafter or educate their users to do that but we’re not helping and
>>>> we’re making it difficult.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> If your web site is not in English then you're forced to use special
>>> characters like diacritics which makes it hard to avoid URL encoded
>>> characters (the browser location bar displays the URL nicely but if you
>>> copy the URL the result is not nice).
>> 
>> Agreed. So I’d say it’s even more important to allow the user to be able
>> to easily view and change the resulting URL when they’re not in English.
>> 
>> Thanks
>> -Vincent
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> -----
>>>>> 
>>>>> IMO what you are describing is advanced user behavior. Normal users
>> don't
>>>>> generally care about their URLs and SEO.
>>>> 
>>>> I don’t fully agree with you. I have the feeling (can’t prove it) that a
>>>> good number of our users care about the generated URLs.
>>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Also I think that simple users may care about URL without being advanced
>>>> users. Making them advanced users will expose them to a lot more
>> complexity
>>>> than they need to know.
>>>> 
>>>>> But the beauty of XWiki is that
>>>>> you can customize it locally to perfectly match your needs.
>>>> 
>>>> That’s not exactly true (and it’s far from being easy, just check
>>>> createinline.vm): It means overriding large portions of vm code and
>> having
>>>> to do manual merges whenever you upgrade. A major PITA.
>>>> 
>>>>> Vincent mentioned something about AWM. I don't see much difference from
>>>> the
>>>>> Create Page. We generate the names from title here too. We display them
>>>> in
>>>>> the breadcrumb, but in a more simple way. Displaying the
>>>> "localhost"/server
>>>>> part is not simple user behavior. AWM is more complex.
>>>>> 
>>>>> -----
>>>>> 
>>>>> So I would not change anything on the product side, since I believe
>> these
>>>>> should be solved as custom changes for your instance.
>>>>> We want to encourage users to use page titles (with spaces in them
>> since
>>>>> they are more readable and supported), while we are preserving the page
>>>>> name behavior for advances users (but we don't enforce it).
>>>> 
>>>> I don’t agree with this sentence: We definitely don’t want to encourage
>>>> users to use titles in URLs.
>>>> 
>>>>> If users made
>>>>> mistakes they can always change the title or rename the page.
>>>>> On the product side the only change I would like us to do is using the
>>>> URL
>>>>> naming, but this was debated in the past and dropped for Vincent's
>>>> reasons.
>>>> 
>>>> What reasons, I don’t remember a discussion about using URL name instead
>>>> of page name?
>>>> 
>>>> So our main disagreement is that I consider that favouring encoded
>>>> characters in URLs is not a good thing while you think it’s not a large
>>>> enough problem to do something about it.
>>>> 
>>>> Would it make our UI too complex to use for simple users if we were
>>>> showing a URL and the ability to change the last part of it? IMO what’s
>>>> complex is when we have Page name and Page Title. But I don’t feel
>> there’d
>>>> be confusion between URL and Page title.
>>>> 
>>>> What do others think?
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks
>>>> -Vincent
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Caty
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 11:57 PM, Vincent Massol <vinc...@massol.net>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On 20 Apr 2017, at 22:51, Vincent Massol <vinc...@massol.net> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Hi Vishal,
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Ok, I misunderstood you in your first email. I understood the
>> opposite.
>>>>>> I thought you were complaining that have 2 notions (page name + page
>>>> title)
>>>>>> was confusing but it’s actually the opposite! What you find confusing
>> is
>>>>>> the fact that it’s not easy for your users to set both the page name
>> and
>>>>>> page titles!
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> It’s funny (or not :)) since this is exactly what we had in past
>>>>>> versions of XWiki and we had several complaints that it was confusing
>> to
>>>>>> have the 2 notions and this is why he hid the page name only for
>>>> advanced
>>>>>> users.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Actually, if I remember well, what we were doing was to ask for the
>> page
>>>>>> name and we were setting the title to the same as the page name by
>>>> default
>>>>>> and then the user could edit the title before saving the page.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> We’ve now done the opposite (user deciding on the title and page name
>>>>>> being derived from it) but leading to the issue you’re raising about
>> URL
>>>>>> SEO…
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Thanks
>>>>>> -Vincent
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> See below.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On 20 Apr 2017, at 14:20, Vishal <thewikinote...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Thanks Vincent for your thorough reply..
>>>>>>>> You guessed it right. We intend to have clean and short urls for SEO
>>>>>>>> reasons.
>>>>>>>> Current scheme creates two problems:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 1) The Page name is fetched automatically from the Title. Often the
>>>>>> titles
>>>>>>>> have spaces which translate as *percent characters *in url which
>> makes
>>>>>> it
>>>>>>>> somewhat unclean :)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Indeed you’re right. By hiding the page name we’re now incitating to
>>>>>> have longer URLs and encoded characters showing up in URLs which is
>> not
>>>>>> nice I agree.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Maybe one solution is to do something similar to what we do in AWM,
>>>> i.e.
>>>>>> generate automatically the URL from the title entered by the user and
>>>> show
>>>>>> the resulting URL to the user and give the user the opportunity to
>>>> change
>>>>>> the URL.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> See http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Extension/
>>>>>> App%20Within%20Minutes%20Application/AppWithinMinutes-Step1.png
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 2) Secondly, to have the shorter url, we use only the short forms of
>>>>>>>> complete title.
>>>>>>>> Ex. For title 'Pune University' we use name PU.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Hey, you’re from Pune? :) I’ve been there about 15 times! That was
>> in a
>>>>>> previous job where my company and KPIT Cummins were partners.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Otherwise in this hierarchy of pages, the url would be much longer.
>>>>>>>> Ex. We have page 'Electronics and Telecommunications' branch under
>>>> page
>>>>>>>> 'Pune University'. We should not have such a long url. Instead here
>> we
>>>>>> need
>>>>>>>> PU/ENTC or Pune-University/ENTC
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> To avoid all this, what we currently do:
>>>>>>>> 1) On create page dialog, use PU as title.. This will create url as
>>>> PU.
>>>>>>>> If full name is used here as title, we need to use - instead of
>> spaces
>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>> avoid percent characters in url.
>>>>>>>> 2) While in edit mode, change the title back to Pune University.
>>>> Remove
>>>>>> any
>>>>>>>> - characters to make title clean.
>>>>>>>> This is where confusion creeps in.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> If these two terms create confusion, why I need to show them both:
>>>>>>>> I guess the *confusion is due to term Name*. It doesn't reflect
>> actual
>>>>>> usage
>>>>>>>> of the term. URL or weblink or link or web address would be more apt
>>>>>> terms
>>>>>>>> to use to instead of Name.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Regarding Page name vs Page URL.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> A bit of history: The reason we used page name and not page URL
>>>>>> originally is because what the user is creating is a document in the
>>>>>> database and initially it was called Document Name. Since that was a
>> bit
>>>>>> confusing for users, we had decided to call it Page Name. It just
>>>> happened
>>>>>> that the URL used was directly derived from the document/page name.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> In practice the 3 concepts could have different values:
>>>>>>> * a value for the document’s name in the DB
>>>>>>> * another value for the document’s title
>>>>>>> * yet another value used in the URL.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> We’ve had discussions so that we could let the user provide shorter
>>>> URLs
>>>>>> for pages in the future.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Now for the time being and since we don’t have this ATM, I think I
>>>> agree
>>>>>> with you that we could decide to display to the user the URL that will
>>>> be
>>>>>> generated (the encoded URL) and allow the user to change it.
>> Internally
>>>> the
>>>>>> user would change the document name.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> My users can differentiate between Title and URL. But the whole
>>>>>> procedure we
>>>>>>>> follow is certainly not understandable by all. And we definitely
>> need
>>>> to
>>>>>>>> follow this whole long procedure, just to have short and clean urls.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Yes, if you’re asking your users to care about the URLs that get
>>>>>> generated, right now they need to be advanced users to be able to edit
>>>> the
>>>>>> page name in the Create Page UI (since changing the title afterwards
>> is
>>>> too
>>>>>> cumbersome).
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> So, by showing both fields at the first place itself, I would like
>> to
>>>>>>>> shorten the procedure and url length.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I’m in agreement with you. Let’s see what others think.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Thanks for this interesting discussion!
>>>>>>> -Vincent
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> View this message in context: http://xwiki.475771.n2.nabble.
>>>>>> com/Page-Title-and-Name-confusion-tp7603546p7603551.html
>>>>>>>> Sent from the XWiki- Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>> 
>> 

Reply via email to