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From: "Cole, Ronald" <rcole@usip.org>
To: "jspwiki-user@incubator.apache.org" <jspwiki-user@incubator.apache.org>
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2009 14:59:54 -0400
Subject: RE: wish lists
Thread-Topic: wish lists
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Dear Derek,

Thanks for your question. It really made me focus on what it is exactly tha=
t we need.=20

It is so very hard to figure out what open source project to incorporate an=
d which not to. There are generally many competitors, and no one has a real=
ly good perspective on all of them. The advocates of every particular proje=
ct, who are busy investing so much of their own time, will generally advoca=
te their own project completely. So it makes it very hard to determine whic=
h path to go down. I have gotten away from complete technical reviews (whic=
h we do not have time for) and have fallen back to relying on my intuition =
- which is flawed, but at least fast.

We are blessed with little funding and tight deadlines :-)  But we are tryi=
ng to prove that an open source project can be developed by a government ag=
ency. I know most of you have never heard of the United States Institute of=
 Peace (http://www.usip.org). But you will ;-)

Below are the things I can think of that what would be present in an ideal =
wiki for us to incorporate. We are using a less than ideal system (as descr=
ibed in bullet point 3) but its functional.

1.) I want something that is completely easy to install. Note: JSPWiki is e=
asy to install (at least for me). I have had no time getting it run on my s=
tack.
2.) I want something that can just display one page with no adornment other=
 than the body text. Perhaps this is possible, but it looks like its going =
to take some fiddling.
3.) I want pages that we can pre-load with data easily before the wiki is e=
very called. When people create simulations they may put starting text in s=
ome of the documents that the players will work on. Currently we use MySQL =
as a database, and so working with a very simple text editor, I can just al=
low CRUD operations on the stuff from the database and all is well, and all=
 is done.
4.) Ideally, I want a wiki where I can control the persistence layer. We ar=
e doing online training simulations and trying to capture as much of the in=
teractions as possible in the database. This will make it easy for play bac=
k and analysis. We are integrating many tools into this project and if we s=
tart allowing the data to slip into many different places, we will have lot=
s of problems down the road.
5.) I want a wiki that works, like google shared docs seems to, to handle t=
ransparently the issue of multiple people editing at once. (I know this is =
asking for a lot.) Baring that, I want something that can warn a user if so=
meone else (who may have authenticated - see #6 below - with the same user =
name) is editing.
6.) I want a system where our application can log in, and then users of the=
 system just have to get by our own internal authentication.
7.) Ultimately we want a system that we can just call up a page based on it=
s URL (ending in something like 'mydatabase_789') and have document '789' w=
hich is associated with the 'mydatabase' schema pop up, and have in it any =
starting text that the simulation author desired.=20

It is quite a wish list. Which is why we are probably going to stick with t=
he simple but functional system that we have for quite a while to come. But=
 as I stated in my first email, I applaud your effort and look forward to t=
he day we integrate your wiki into our project.


Best,
Skip

http://www.usip.org

"It should be our pride to teach ourselves as well as we can always to spea=
k and write as simply and clearly and unpretentiously as possible, and to a=
void like the plague the appearance of possessing knowledge which is too de=
ep to be clearly and simply expressed." -- Karl Popper
________________________________________
From: Derek Hohls [DHohls@csir.co.za]
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 4:11 AM
To: jspwiki-user@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: wish lists

Skip

I, like others I am sure, am curious as to exactly what features you
think that  JSPWIKI "will need to develop a bit more"?

If you need more control over document editing, it might be worth
considering a CMS (content management system).  If you want to stick
with a JAVA/Tomcat stack, then some examples are:

http://www.hippocms.org/
http://www.dotcms.org/
http://www.alfresco.com/

Alfresco, for example, offers "drag and drop" functionality for
document management - see:
http://www.alfresco.com/products/dm/


>>> On 2009/03/19 at 07:35, in message
<E87DAB34DB353444A23481D2D1BAD2AE060EADD4B2@MBXCLUSTER.usip.local>,
"Cole, Ronald" <rcole@usip.org> wrote:

Dear JSPWiki Community,

Just want you all to know that we are rooting for you.

I manage an open source project myself. We are creating a way for
non-programmers to create multi-player online training simulations. (see
opensimplatform.org for details)

We need a good document editing tool to allow players to work on
documents together. This is kind of tricky since one has to point to the
document by the specific database and document id of it. We are using a
very simple, but functional, WYSIWYG editor right now (openWYSIWYG 1.0).


I*d like to have more features than what we have now, specifically
the ability to prevent players from clobbering each other*s edits, but
ease of installation is a big deal for us. Right now all we have to do
is copy the files up, and boom its installed.

We are working on an apache/tomcat stack already, so I would rather use
JSPWIKI than a php based wiki, but from what I*m seeing, JSPWIKI will
need to develop a bit more before we can just *pop* it in.

So please keep up your good work!  You are making my life, and the
lives of many other people, better.

:-)

Best,
Skip


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