Wish List for 1.1.7
Recently, DarTar posted to the community mailing list the following query:[H]owever fabulous 1.1.7 will be in terms of improvements, stability and
new functionality -- I'd like to hear from you what you would consider
the missing killer feature for Wikka.
Here are some of the suggestions that have been made up to this point. Please free free to (in DarTar's words) "have your say and be unpredictable" and add to the wishlist. Wikka is all about community, and the only way for the Wikka Crew to know what you want is to tell us!
- OpenID To login to an OpenID-enabled website (even one you've never been to before), just type your OpenID URI. The website will then redirect you to your OpenID Provider to login using whatever credentials it requires. Once authenticated, your OpenID provider will send you back to the website with the necessary credentials to log you in. By using Strong Authentication where needed, the OpenID Framework can be used for all types of transactions, both extending the use of pure single-sign-on as well as the sensitivity of data shared.
- Moderated and/or Email Validated Registration Administrative option of reviewing new registrations prior to new users posting, further option of new users being emailed a link which must be followed to activate registration.
These would be ideal candidates for modules using the new User Registration (UR) Validation framework.
- Microformats Microformats are a way of adding simple markup to human-readable data items such as events, contact details or locations, on web pages, so that the information in them can be extracted by software and indexed, searched for, saved, cross-referenced or combined. More technically, they are items of semantic markup, using just standard (X)HTML with a set of common class-names. They are open and available, freely, for anyone to use.
- WCAG Compliance From the WCAG page: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) documents explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. Web "content" generally refers to the information in a Web page or Web application, including text, images, forms, sounds, and such.
- Publishing Platform Provide Wikka with functionality to produce typeset documents using LaTeX/TeX as the underlying publishing system. Options could be provided to generate content in a number of formats (PS, PDF, etc.). A complete self-contained publishing wiki would also include functionality to manage references. A modular approach would permit additional publishing platforms to be supported.
- Rapid Development Framework Wikka is an ideal platform for creating standalone applications using a framework such as CakePHP. Wikka provides the "container" (i.e., look-and-feel, authentication, security, etc.), freeing the developer to focus on providing core functionality.
- Educational CMS Wikka often finds itself deployed in academic settings. It makes sense to provide Wikka with functionality to deliver educational-related content, such as lessons, lesson plans, alternative assessment portfolio management, and a host of other features.
- Enhanced Folksonomy Create a tagging framework for Wikka.
- Statistics High-volume Wikka sites would benefit from a simple API to extract and display data about users, pages, and usage statistics.
- Charting Functionality Build a module to provide support for online charting and diagramming, such as is provided by vendors like Gliffy. Other networking schemes, such as those used by sociologists to describe social networks, could be supported as well given a well-designed extensible framework.
- Generic Support for Markup Languages Many of the ideas for future Wikka enhancement are dependent upon the ability to handle different kinds of markup languages. A generic modular framework supporting language-specific modules, each with their own editors, input parsers, and output filters, is essential to keep Wikka lightweight and fast.
- Modular Markup Parsers Given the number of different wiki dialects and no sign of consolidation in the near future, a "multilingual" wiki that could be easily configured to support any wiki markup dialect, on a per user basis, would make WikkaWiki installations easily accessible to all users.
- Category Link Description would provide for a short description of the page being categorized. On the page: Category(some category) desc="A page for users to list wishes." This would translate to the category page as "WishListFor117 A page for users to list wishes."
- WikkaFramework What if WikkaWiki was refactored in such a way that all of the base functionality (security, authentication, session management, module management, skinning, etc.) was offered as a basic framework upon which to quickly build and prototype other applications? WikkaWiki could then be offered as a ready-to-deploy set of modules on top of the WikkaFramework. Given the glut of wikis that are out there, and the relative dearth of easy-to-use, robust frameworks (for instance, although robust, I don't consider CakePHP "easy to use"), this might be something to consider for the future direction of WikkaWiki. (One important question needs to be answered: Is it possible to release WikkaFramework under the GPL and still permit the development of proprietary modules [such as what might be found on an Internet appliance]? Or would the LGPL be more appropriate for such a framework? And if so, would it even be possible to relicense from GPL to LGPL without a complete rewrite?)
- Multilingual Wiki Possibility of writing the same page in different languages, like with Anwiki.
- WYSIWYG Possibility to switch between Wiki editor and a true WYSIWYG editor like in Google Documents. See WysiWyg.
