docsWiki

[Marielle Lange]

David,

Many thanks for that long reply. I have added to the file where I  
keep all suggestions (still on my computer... will move it to a wiki  
page this evening).


> Yes -- and I have code to read and write to an online wiki (at the  
> moment not with authentication for TikiWiki) - I am aiming to use  
> ssh and certificates for any secure and easy to script work on this  
> - lot easier than coding the session managment.
>

Great!


> revdocs.org / net / com sound fine to me. Happy to register them  
> today if you want on behalf of any group that want to take this  
> forward.
>

We have one vote for revdocs.org (probably yours).



> I have moved off TikiWiki and MediaWiki has the same problems -  
> hard to integrate with Rev and not purpose built for the task.
>

Yes, I have the same opinion. It is possible to hack tikiwiki but  
that's  probably at least a week work. Then we will need to hack it  
for something else, etc., etc. Not the best fit.


> The only wiki that supports all of these is Jira:
>
>      - http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/
>      - http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/JIRA 
> +Subversion+plugin
>
> It is not open source, but is free for open source projects. It is  
> a robust commercial product used by MySQl and a number of large  
> open source community. Very well designed.
>
> Trac is the only open source solution that comes close:
>
>     - http://www.edgewall.com/trac/
>
> We have it installed here, but not with the SVN bit and syntax  
> colouring working here. It also lacks XML-RPC support at the  
> moment, but using https we can work around that.
>
> Regarding hosting - I can offer this on a dedicated server if a  
> small group of us would like to contribute.
>

I had a colorization module in Drupal, so I started checking out  
Drupal with the feature listed (before I came across Jira). Drupal is  
free (GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE -- no restriction I could find  
inhttp://drupal.org/LICENSE.txt).

Drupal is an open-source platform and content management system for  
building dynamic web sites offering a broad range of features and  
services including user administration, publishing workflow,  
discussion capabilities, news aggregation, metadata functionalities  
using controlled vocabularies and XML publishing for content sharing  
purposes. Equipped with a powerful blend of features and  
configurability, Drupal can support a diverse range of web projects  
ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven sites.

Anybody on this list familiar with Jira and Drupal and can offer some  
advice?


> These are what I would suggest are the requirements for the best  
> documentation wiki for our purpose:
>     1) Robust well supported open source wiki
>

What I read at <http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/leading- 
open-source-cms-mambo-versus-drupal-a-comprehensive-comparison/>
Drupal is  cleanly designed with extensibility in mind and more  
flexible. Drupal provides a standard high-level API for developing  
extensions and making it easier to extend Drupal in a standard way  
with uniform look-and-feel. Drupal provides better support for  
internationalization through i18n module. Drupal has better support  
of Search-Engine-Friendly URLs in core and through modules. Drupal  
supports multiple sites with a single installation with fine-grained  
access control and ability to selectively share configuration  
settings and database tables. Drupal comes with better templating  
system.



>     2) Full wiki functionality revealed via web services - XmlRPC  
> for instance - to allow direct integration with Rev
>

Apparently, it meets the criterion for web service:

<http://an9.org/devdev/making_a_cool_web_service?sxip- 
homesite=&checked=1>

Honestly, for 90% of sites, there is no reason that a sub-five-minute  
Drupal install won’t accomplish almost all of the work involved in  
starting a website immediately, and it has the nicest (and one of the  
best documented) plugin systems I have ever worked with. You aren’t  
going to come up with something better than these frameworks and  
still have time for what you were really trying to do, a cool web  
service.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/thox/24237747/>    ... Drupal XUL with  
XMLRPC. Anticipating the future, xul compatibility is something very  
good to have.


>     3) Code and binary stack versioning linked to wiki documentation
>

Drupal features content versioning. It also supports taxonomy  
support  (we will need this too, this will become more and more  
important over the next 3 years).

>     4) Extensible syntax highlighting
>

They have a very powerful code colorization module (<http:// 
drupal.org/node/21368>). Then it is as simple as writing <code  
type="language">...</code> in your page.


>     5) Email notifications for changes
>     6) Simple navigation
>

This seems to be the case: http://drupal.org/. The look is a lot more  
modern than tikiwiki.


> The basic functionality I imagine is to have a simple site with an  
> index / outline of the documentation which would automatically be  
> generated from the wiki. A user could use the web site to  
> contribute to the wiki or access, read and write to the wiki  
> directly from within Revolution.
>

Exactly, yes.


> There would also be a section of code snippets and handlers with  
> SVN for version management linked to the wiki documentation for the  
> code. A user would be able to search and download these code  
> snippets directly from within Revolution.
>

Exactly, yes.


> Additionally I have requirements to add the following:
>
>     1) Issue tracking (tickets) and milestone support
>

This means there is a main manager and a support service. Is this  
realistic? If you propose support, you give users a reason to expect  
it. Do we really want that (i.e., to end up doing revolution's job)?  
Isn't open comments more appropriate?


>     2) LDAP support
>

Authentication only LDAP module <http://drupal.org/node/27640>


>     3) Folksonomy tag support - ie video, regEx, recusive
>

Making a Drupal Folksonomy Tag Cloud <http:// 
www.echochamberproject.com/node/235>


Best is probably to install both and put them to the test for a month  
and then check up what are their pros and cons (often you discover  
annoyances only by experience).

Shall we move this to a small group discussion? (somewhere on a wiki,  
with occasional reports on this list).

Marielle

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--------
Marielle Lange (PhD),  Psycholinguist

Alternative emails: mlange at blueyonder.co.uk, M.Lange at ed.ac.uk
Homepage                                                            
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