FreeLists / dokuwiki / [dokuwiki] Re: dokuwiki comments from a newbie

[Andreas Gohr <andi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jason Keltz writes:

>  Doing some experimentation, I have some feedback that I 
> was hoping to pass on to the developers, and I believe that this is 
> probably the best forum for this feedback.
Thanks, for your feedback. I'll just add a few thoughts on it...

> As you know, the default Dokuwiki template does not include an optional 
> sidebar.  In order to get a sidebar, you need to go out an install one 
> of the custom user-written templates.  sidebars are very common these 
> days.  I would love if the default installation included a simple 
> sidebar.
I'm not sure if we will go this way. I agree that some users might want it 
(some already spoke up here). But each feature added to the core adds more 
code that needs to be maintained. A sidebar can easily be added by different
templates currently. It might be more complicated to add a sitebar in a 
dynamic way. Also all template authors would need to support a sidebar 
then... and what if you want two sidebars? You'd need to rely on template 
additions again... so I think we wouldn't really gain anything from this.
>  It would 
> also be nice if there were a few other template choices that came 
> directly with the system.
I understand your desire to have multiple templates in the core to have well 
maintained templates... but who do think will maintain them? Me? The other 
developers? We have a lot to maintain already. There are a few template 
developers who are very dedicated to their templates. They regulary update 
them with each new release. Adding those template to the default install 
would not change anything except inflating the download size.
   
> It would be great if plugins could add their own section to the "edit 
> bar" that comes up when editing a page.
They can. AFAIK there are at least two ways to extend the toolbar. By 
javascript or by an action plugin - both should be described at the wiki. If 
plugin authors do this is a completely different question.
> The "index" feature is really great and gives a top-down overview of the 
> whole wiki site.  It would be nice if the "index" was extended to 
> provide a "create" button that let you create either a new namespace, or 
> add a wiki page to an existing namespace.
There is no way of "creating" a namespace. They just come into existance 
when a document using the namespace is created. I don't recommend adding 
pages by simply "creating" them somewhere. You should always create a link 
to the page first, otherwise you will have orphaned pages no one can find.
I'm planning to extend the index to make it more responsive and user 
friendly though using AJAX (it's on my todo for a looong time). When this is 
done it should be easy to extend it by some clever JavaScript to add what 
you want. It would be even possible today I guess but might be a wee bit 
more complicated.
> The ACL system is very powerful -- probably one of the most powerful 
> that I have seen looking at some of the other wiki packages.  However, 
> the fact that it only displays the ACLs for the current namespace seems 
> a bit confusing.  (I know that there is a different plugin that gets 
> around this).  All of the other options in the "admin" menu apply to the 
> whole site, but the ACLs only apply to the current namespace.
You are right about that one and I thought about it my self already. My 
initial intention was to make sure the page does not get too cluttered when 
many ACL rules exist. But i guess nobody really uses so much rules anyway. I 
think this should be changed as you suggested. Would you mind to open a 
feature request in the bugtracker, so this is not forgotten?
> It would be wonderful if Dokuwiki users could vote on the 
> plugins on the site
My dream is to have a powerful plugin repository with votings, user comments 
version control and maybe even have "reviewed" plugins. Up to now I did not 
find the time/motivation to write such a system.
> and if there was enough interest in a particular 
> plugin, it would be great if it could be integrated right into the 
> default install so that it could be tested and released with the 
> package.
You won't see this. See the templates above. It might be possible that we 
chose to implement a few minor things currently available in plugins in the 
core though. But this will be small enhancements only (I'm thinking of 
table row spans or multiline list items - but I'm not so sure about them 
either).
>  This would save a lot of time, effort, and trouble.
Always remember: It might you safe some trouble or effort but it just shifts 
this trouble to the developers ;-)
Thanks for your feedback so far. I really appreciate it.

Andi
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