[Building Sakai] Rwiki

[Knoop, Peter]

I took Charlie's and Adam's comments to be about adding wysiwyg editing capabilities to rwiki in general, not specifically about adding FCKeditor to rwiki.  However, given the usage of FCKeditor elsewhere in Sakai, that seems like an important avenue to consider.

I'm not sure if you're speaking here as Noah Botimer, Sakai Developer at Michigan, or as Noah Botimer, Sakai Product Council Member, however, given the sizable interest in seeing this capability in 2.6 (and the subsequent disappoint when it didn't make it), it seems premature to downplay this as a possible near-term goal.  (Especially if Charlie and Adam are expressing an interest in helping work on it!)  I think it's already been pointed out that Rwiki featured prominently in the two TWSIA winner presentations at the conference.  Now, one could interpret that as the tool is already usable as-is, and exciting things can be done with it now.  Or, one could interpret that as it being a critical tool and enhancing its capabilities would enable more people to use it, and perhaps in even more innovateive ways.  The truth, of course, likely lies somewhere in-between. 

This topic may indeed require some "whole ball of wax" thinking, and it may take months to refine a solution.  To me that would argue for work resuming on it sooner, rather than later, especially if there are people interested in forming a team to work on it now.  Keep in mind there was an implementation already developed for 2.5/2.6, it just turned out to be too buggy to use reliably in its current state.  (I've forgotten, did it end up in production at Oxford?)

I'll also note that this thread is on sakai-dev.  If you asked this same question of the end-users and their proxies on sakai-user, you are likely to get different responses, though I would bet interest in seeing a wysiwyg capability added to rwiki would be among the highest, based on past levels of interest.

-peter


> -----Original Message-----
> From: sakai-dev-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai-dev-
> bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Noah Botimer
> Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 12:52 PM
> To: Charlie Macchia
> Cc: sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org; 'Ian Boston'
> Subject: Re: [Building Sakai] Rwiki
> 
> I have to offer some dissent here. Adding WYSIWYG support is a "whole
> ball of wax". I am not arguing that people want some rich
> collaborative editing; I am just challenging that "add FCKeditor to
> rWiki" is the first/best conclusion to make. There are lots of bits
> to untangle once the first pass of integration is done, probably
> months of real usage/mistakes/refinement.
> 
> I would voice support for the three items that Savitha identified and
> add a few of my own. These are simple things that I think add
> cognitive load and mechanical frustration for people:
> 
>   1. The viewed styles should match up with more traditional Sakai
> formatting.
> 
>   2. There should be an easy way to browse the site pages and insert
> a link.
> 
>   3. The editor box should be in a fixed-width font for alignment and
> character discernment.
> 
> Each of these six is quite straightforward and would reduce usage
> barriers significantly. Resolving them would improve the experience
> while preserving the spirit and models in place. The bigger question
> of rich text collaborative editing may end up with FCKeditor in
> rWiki, but I have trouble thinking of that as the highest priority,
> given the wealth of options in late 2009.
> 
> A detail note: The style change would be most invasive, but it would
> be easy to offer options: wholesale update, default to updated style
> with page opt-out, default to current style with page opt-in, or
> maintain current style.
> 
> Thanks,
> -Noah
> 
> On Jul 16, 2009, at 11:29 AM, Charlie Macchia wrote:
> 
> > On 7/16/09 8:01 AM, "Adam Marshall" <adam.marshall at oucs.ox.ac.uk>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Fixing the wysiwyg editor has got to be #1 priority for most people.
> >>
> >> Adam
> >
> > I couldn't agree more, making the wysiwyg even half as usable as
> > FCK editor
> > would really help Sakai as a whole: maybe we should form a team?
> >
> > Charlie
> >
> >
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