DFWiki the next generations....

DFWiki the next generations....

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -
Number of replies: 21
Hello everybody!
As some of you may rember, since may '05 exists a new alernative wiki module called dfwiki ( df because David and Derran who are the developers who actually write the code ).
Well, we took a loooong vacation and we're back.
Some hints about the directions we want to take:
- we want to implement right now the few features remaining to fit the moodle team requests to make dfwiki the wiki moodle module, and apply for it (xml export, backup and restore, old wiki migration, and a few more)
- dfwiki is a dangerously creative module, in the sense that we (the dfwiki team) want to make it grow beyond its actual borders, and maybe maybe Big Martin does not like its evolution because is could break moodle siprit ( he sai somethin about it last month). So no problem guiño!!! We will wrap a neat dfwiki module that will only be this : a wiki module... Then we will start launching a bunch of dfwiki extensions to make all of you happy. and we will only add to the main dfwiki module those ho get the blessing of moodle
some of our crazy ideas for dfwiki:
- we want to have a dfwiki reader interface, that does not have to be the same as the "editing" dfwiki environment
- we will add tools to create reading indexes to the wiki pages... this means : to turn dfwiki in a content development tool.
- multi editor wiki ... when you create a page you can choose wich editor style you want to use. (wikipedia markup is faster an cool, but if you need to copy paste Moodle HTML editor is your choice, even ewiki fans must be anywhere!!!)
- latex integration
- pretty printing : to pdf/html
And if you believe in scifi
PDA (J2ME) access to dfwiki contents
Well, suggestions, opinions and cookies will be wellcome!
Cheers and rock & roll
Marc

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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ger Tielemans -
Suggestions,opinions..
When students use a wiki to construct their collab knowledge-tree, it is essential that they easily can change the titles of the pages and can re organise the pages in the tree. (like in Swiki)
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In reply to Ger Tielemans

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -
Hi Ger,
actually in dfwiki is possible to change page names, and delete them but we decided to keep it only for teacher users, we cab make it available to students as a preference.
Anyway to change page names would have a cascade effect in all the pages linking to it. How do we handle this?
Wha we use is the synonim tool, wich lets you create synonims for pages. So you can link to the page name or to the synonym.
Another good idea in this line wold be to have a page name and a page title.
Ciao
Marc
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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ger Tielemans -
In Swiki the real page names are hidden, you only see and can change the alias of the pagename! (the reference pages also show the alias as hyperlink)
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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Hi Ludo,

it sounds like a cool TODO list. Some question here:

How does dfwiki handle file uploads (to DB, FileSystem...? ).
How does dfwiki handles non ISO-8859-1 charsets (to link pages by title...).
Does dfwiki support any type of filter to autolink to page titles?
Is any RSS option available (new pages, latest updates...)?

Sure that some of these have been replied before, but...if you can repeat it, please. wink

TIA and ciao smile

PS: And welcome back!
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In reply to Eloy Lafuente (stronk7)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -
HI Eloi!
Vamos palla!
- How does dfwiki handle file uploads (to DB, FileSystem...? ).
good question indeed! Actually this part is something that we are planning to change rigth now. Dfwiki has 3 editors and its behaviour is diferent in each one ( wich has to change ) The files are stored in the filesystem. When you use the
HTML editor dfwiki uses the moodle embeded file utylity, now we have to extend this to the other editors. Specially the dfwiki native wich is wikipedia like and cool!

- How does dfwiki handles non ISO-8859-1 charsets (to link pages by title...).
Buff, i dont know exactly, maybe Ferran or David Kwno more about it ( Guys?¿)

- Autolink to pages....
Not yet ... -> another one to the to do list. I think that context parameters should be considered ( moodle, current wiki, other wikis in the course ), we have to think about it.

- RSS. Not yet, but since we have almost ready the xml export filter, it will come soon. we could even add mp3 files and podcast it payaso.

Ciao Eloy
Ludo














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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ferran Recio Calderó -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Hi Ludo,

I'm one of the original developers of DFwiki (the 'F' one). I come to help Marc in the non ISO languajes question. When we close the current version before holidays, we think that non ISO languajes are full supported, but we we're wrong. Some weeks later, a japanesse user tell us that there's some problem with it when its on a page name.

Now we will work to fix it.
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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Bernard Boucher -
Hi Marc,
            maybe a touchgraph extension to dfwiki if your time permit.

Thanks for working on that,

Bernard

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In reply to Bernard Boucher

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -
Ohhh!!!
What a cool toy!! I didnt kew id did exist , thanks... we'll get to it estupendo
Ciao
Marc
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Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
When you guys can

  - make a smooth upgrade path from old wiki module to DFwiki
  - make DFwiki solid, simple-to-use and expandable

then I will replace the old eWiki in Moodle instantly!

Thanks for all the hard work (please try not to get distracted with too many esoteric features!)
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -

Hi Martin,

thank you,  we take it as a challenge!!! I hope to have it ready before xmas.

About the esoteric features ... I've splitted the development teams in two

- the simple and straigth moodle wiki team (the twin's team)
- and the esoteric team - where the fun is guiño

Dont' worry if you read me talking about ghosts, wizards and UFO conspirations...  the twins keep on it and the versions will be separated
to keep the wiki simple, and the esoteric wiki will be there for daredevils
and explorers.

I'll keep you posted

Marc

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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Bernard Boucher -
Hi Marc,
             welcome to the dark side of Moodleevil

May the force be with you,

Bernard

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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Darren Smith -
The biggest problem I have with using wikis in a class environment is two students working on the same page at the same time on different computers making different changes.

It would be nice if students could 'check out' a page when it is being edited a la dreamweaver style. Of course the page should only be checked out for a couple of mins or so.

Perhaps this functionality exists already but I have yet to find it sad
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Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -
Oh yeah,
concurrency is allways a problem when you work in web environments.
One possibility is to enable "page" locking when an user chooses to edit a
page, but if the user closes its browser without canceling or commiting any changes ... when is the page unlocked...
The best option is to store both versions of the page each one at its commit time
and advise in some way that two diferent versions are in conflict, then a supervisor can use the history ans solve the problem.
If we choose the lock way we will have two problems with oposite solutions:
- the page remains locked for a long time without nobody comming into
- the edit time allowed to the user exceeds the lock time
ciao
Marc
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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Joan Codina Filba -
Maybe we could do as CVS does:
  1. Teacher can lock a page while editing (as a teacher he is responsible enough to unlock the page)
  2. A student gets a warning when he tries to modify a page that other students are modifiing
  3. when saving a page that has been modified by someone else while we where editing the page a "merge" is produced
    1. If there are no conflicts then ... the merge is the resulting page
    2. If there are conflicts then the user must manually merge both versions.
Of course we are not writting programs as in CVS so "merge" is the key. What means merge?, it could merge sentences?, or paragraphs?. What means "a conflict"? How to solve it? Maybe displaying a set of  "Original text" / "own  changes" / "other 's changes" and let the user merge them in a "resulting text"?



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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Petr Kalis -
- latex integration
     Thats good to hear. BTW. Great work on DFwiki, many thanks.big grin

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In reply to Petr Kalis

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ferran Recio Calderó -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
A new Dfwiki revision is available on ot's official page. It fixes a concurrency problem. It's only a partial solution but it makes it more stable. As Marc said in that forum, we will implement a authomatic merge function for preventing loosing data when two persons edit a page.

For the moment, the program show a warning when a page has been saved by two persons simultaneously.

Thanks for your support and suggestions for DFwiki,

Ferran.
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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Julian Ridden -

Hey guys, sounds like a great tool. I am happy to offer a 1.6 testing environement for your use if you want access.

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In reply to Ludo (Marc Alier)

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Will Taylor -
I've created a WIKI page describing markup for DFWiki, for an installation I'm using - thought others might find this useful, so am posting it here (attached in .txt file, should be able to copy/paste this into the Edit window of your WIKI).  This is for the "DFwiki" editor, which implements markup similar to MediaWiki, tho more limited and with some significant differences (e.g. in the Header markukps).

btw, I am totally captivated with this module, kudos to the developers!

- will


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In reply to Will Taylor

Re: DFWiki the next generations....

by Ludo (Marc Alier) -
Thank you Will!!
I'm posting your wiki markup description to our home wiki.
I hope that mediawiki headers will be implemented soon.
Regards
Marc
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