Revision [11884]
This is an old revision of RyeBread made by RyeBread on 2005-11-17 15:05:42.
First off, thanks to the team for creating such an excellent wiki. I spent a lot of time sampling different programs and I chose this one because it seemed to be a great all-around tool plus easily extensible... which leads me to my next point. :)
After pushing for months, I finally convinced my office to use a wiki for design and documentation collaboration. After 24 hours of setting it up, 50+ pages were created by various members of the team. Not bad, if I do say so myself. Nevertheless, already I have gotten feedback on some things that they wish could be implemented in order to make their lives easier and to help increase the enthusiasm across the office.
I haven't really looked too deep yet into these issues. I would like to work on these and contribute code but in the meantime, I just want to jot the notes down here and make them public while I am at work doing paid labor. :) I'll formalize them into the SuggestionBox or plugin requests later.
-Rye
Open Issues:
- Smart Plural Parsing
Both designers and engineers would like to be able to have the wikiwords "UserWidget" and "UserWidgets" refer to the same page when discussed without needing to add extra syntax. It breaks the flow of typing if they have to mentally stop to add "[[ ]]" everytime they cognitively process a plural noun.
- Namespaces
I almost went with FitNesse because of this feature (but didn't like their interface or markup). Rather than have separate pages like "WidgetDesign1_0" , "WidgetDesign1_5" and "WidgetDesign2_0" we could have "ver1_0/WidgetDesign" , "ver1_5/WidgetDesign" and "ver2_0/WidgetDesign". A page that linked to "WidgetDesign" "" would actually link to the page with the same namespace as itself.
In other words, this wiki is great because it tracks revisions like CVS but doesn't provide the ability to branch a document into a different version.
- Wikiword Override Rule Sets
The ability for an admin to provide say a simple text file that, whenever Wikka parses a Wikiword, it will check the list to see if it should substitute a different link rather issue the default behavior.
- Mass Page Import
The ability to import or mass create/edit pages into the wiki without actually being inside. For example, import pages generated from Doxygen during our nightly build process. (I assume this is probably just a php/mysql script on the wikka database.) Or, if easier, just use a Wikiword Override Rule Set to force certain doc links to point to a different web.
- Visio Support?
I haven't played around with FreeMind very deeply, but immediately engineers asked me how they could import Visio diagrams and include links to them in the pages.
- Forced Template Usage
The ability to force users that want to create new pages to use a template. Also, once editing a templated page, users shouldn't be able to directly change the templated elements contained within but can use, say, actions, to fill in some content. Example: can't reposition or reformat the page title header but can use an action to specify what should be rendered as the page title header.
- Note Recollection
If I add a chunk of content to a page, and record a little note about it, store it, and then within my little window of opportunity I reedit to fix a typo, the same note should appear as a default.
- Feature Log
If the wiki admin adds a plugin, the a description of the system change as well as a timestamp will show up for all users to be informed that some new functionality has been implemented. Something in the style of the RecentChanges page. I could do this manually, but I am trying to imagine if there is something that could be done to make it feel more integrated with the wiki itself.
Annoyances To-do:
- The WikiEdit toolbar is not rendering appropriately in the Opera browser.
- How do I link to a specific category page without having the source page belong to that category?
CategoryUsers
