Revision [6445]

This is an old revision of NilsLindenberg made by NilsLindenberg on 2005-03-03 14:20:56.

 

Userpage of Nils Lindenberg


Me, myself & I

I am a student of social science at the university of Goettingen, Germany (currently on exchange in Bologna, Italy). After testing some wikkas i finally moved to wikka. I made some little hacks to improve configurability, but mainly I am contributing to WikkaDocumentation.

Since february of this year i am a member of the wikka crew, where my topic of interest is mainly the documentation (big surprise, isn't it ;-)

You can find the things I am working on in the moment at http://www.niehle.info or in the todo-list below (many thanks to JsnX for give me a place to test :-)

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html - against the myth of bload programms
http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/WikiAsPim - about using Wiki for personal information management

To do

to have an oversight about what has to be done and what needs attention, more ore less orderd after priority

  1. look at the release-notes and update the documentation where necessary (see also AdminReleaseCheckList)
  1. WikkaSkin: update
  1. DocumentationIndex: write more
  1. ActionInfo: write more
  1. ShowCsv: finish?
  1. HandleCsv:document
  1. make a concept for ExportToPdf
  1. wikka-installer: take a closer look at it
  1. well, the eventmanager and the emailsystem (if i ever find the time)
 



My thoughts about Wikka


Although WikkaWiki is now a very interesting pice of software, there are always things which could be done better. And because I do not want to talk only, I made some contributions to wikka in the three fields which seem the most important to me:

Documentation

There's no good representation without good documentation :)

The most important part for every project is a good documentation. This occurs to software, too. Not only for developers, but also for administrators and end-users. A documentation is only good if there are no questions remaining after reading it!

Configurability

Since people use wikka for many different purposes, wikka needs a maximum of configurability. My additions to that goal:
  1. UserRegistration: An admin can choose if registration is disallowed, allowed only if you know a register-code, or allowed for everyone. This option (and the registration code) are stored in the config
  1. StayingLoggedIn: Let the user choose if he wants to have permanent cookies with his name and password or only a session-based cookie (to be logged out when all browser windows are closed)
  1. AutomaticUserPageCreation let an admin choose to create the page of a new user after his creation. As a template any wikkapage can be used.
  1. PageAndCategoryDivisionInACategory seperation of pages and categories in the category action.
  1. CommentsFormatting allows some (basic) formatting in comments. Problem with backwards compatibility :(

Links to read on:
http://www.cooper.com/articles/art_goal_directed_design.htm - designing for users, not for programmers
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000059.html - choose which choises you give to users
 


Compatibility

To use Wikka to store informations it is necessary to be as compatible to other programms (and older versions of wikka) as possible. So that wikka becomes no information-oneway, but a "crossing point" ;-) My addition to that goal:
  1. HandleCsvData is a library which shall contain functions for, well, handling (reading, writing, sorting etc..) data from and to *.csv files
  1. ShowCsv is the first action using this library. It shows the content of a *.csv file as a html-table.

Links to read on:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html - about the necessity of backward compatibility
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000054.html - the chicken and egg problem
 


to be continued...

My List of things which could be improved in, or added at Wikka

(the items are listed in descending priority)
  1. I18n, L10n=> WikkaInternationalization, HandlingUTF8
  1. a better System for Categorys => CategorySystemOverhaul
  1. E-Mail and => WikkaAndEmail
  1. Toc (Table of Content)
  1. User-to-User-Messages-System (completed this...see WikkaMail --GmBowen)
  1. Access to the Config.php through a wikka-interface
  1. Footnotes (http://www.istitutocolli.org/uniwakka/FootNote)
  1. LaTex support (http://www.istitutocolli.org/uniwakka/MathInsert)
  1. OpenOffice import/export
  1. Smilys (http://www.istitutocolli.org/uniwakka/TablesAndSmileys)

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ActionInfo

- searching the internet for code
- security (actions are open for everyone, solutions for [logged-in-user/Admin only])
- validity (xhtml, main sources for errors)
- parameters (how to get them, need of standard-values, proof of type...)
- errorhandling
- problems occuring with the writing
- generell part about html/php?
- box avout xhtml?
- test about libraries and using wikka-functions

CategoryUsers
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