[Building Sakai] Rwiki

[John Norman]

Well, I'd say yes, you have it right *at the high level*. However,  
there will be quite a lot work to sort out in the details. The 3akai  
demo introduces a number of changes to the user experience and  
promotes the ''wiki-like" functionality to the top level of site  
organisation and embeds "tool functionality" within the pages. My  
suggestion was not to go this far but (a) make a detailed comparison  
of functionality between the TinyMCE editor (it can create pages, but  
I don't think it yet does so with the "placeholder" technique referred  
to be Sean in a subsequent post - although I think it could -  
versioning is automatic in the underlying JCR but I can't remember  
offhand whether we exposed it in the UI, etc.) (b) decide how best to  
incorporate the functionality to minimise the disruption to user  
experience. If aiming to provide a substitute for the "wiki tool" it  
might be worth re-engineering to have it appear within the portal as a  
tool like any other (that was my suggestion) vs. the user experience  
represented in 3akai, which involves a bigger change in user  
experience and might be resisted by campuses who would have a big re- 
training load.

HTH
John

PS the bottom line is that there are options here, but the key issue  
remains resource to work on it.

On 17 Jul 2009, at 19:57, Michael Korcuska wrote:

> Yes, you have this right.
>
> I do think, in the short term, either path (adding WYSIWYG to rWiki  
> or adding functionality to a tinyMCE-based tool) is a big step  
> forward.  In the long run, I'm of the view that wiki markup will  
> become increasingly obscure and a niche application.  While it does  
> afford a certain degree of control, most of Sakai's user needs are  
> well met by something approaching a google doc. More sophisticated  
> users can edit the HTML directly. Wiki markup strikes a middle  
> ground between WYSIWYG and HTML--more control than tinyMCE and less  
> complexity than HTML. As the WYSIWYG HTML editors get better,  
> though, this middle ground continues to shrink. I *do* think there  
> are use cases for wiki markup (e.g. Wikipedia) where you don't want  
> the formatting free-for-all that can result from thousands of people  
> trying to do HTML editing on the same site. I just don't think we  
> are in that category.
>
> Michael
>
> On Jul 17, 2009, at 10:40, Charlie Macchia wrote:
>
>> Hi John, let me know if I've got this right.
>>
>> Are you saying: rather than try to integrate a better WYSIWYG  
>> editor on top
>> of the current rWiki, instead create a separate wiki like tool,  
>> that uses
>> tinyMCE as the front end, but isn't strict wiki syntax, yet still  
>> maintains
>> things like history, versions, alerts etc.
>>
>> Aside from getting into the plusses and minuses - do I have this  
>> right?
>>
>> Charlie
>>
>> On 7/17/09 8:18 AM, "John Norman" <john at caret.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> A slightly different tack to consider (posted as an individual and
>>> early adopter of wiki) is that the use cases where WYSIWYG is
>>> important will be handled by TinyMCE-based page authoring in Sakai  
>>> 3.
>>> However, we don't yet know whether there will be residual demand for
>>> "pure" wiki functionality (i.e. using wiki syntax). Perhaps a good  
>>> way
>>> forward might be to consider introducing the page authoring approach
>>> in the "content authoring on Sakai 2" demo (http://3akai.sakaiproject.org/dev/
>>> for now) as an *additional* new tool within Sakai 2. The way the
>>> technology is presented to users might need to be changed, but in
>>> principle it would allow flexible page authoring and conventional  
>>> wiki
>>> to exist side by side and to be used according to the use case/
>>> requirements.
>>>
>>> An advantage of this approach would be smoothing the path from 2  
>>> to 3.
>>>
>>> Cambridge could support such an effort with advice and guidance, but
>>> would not be able to commit the resource to make it happen.
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>> On 17 Jul 2009, at 11:48, Adam Marshall wrote:
>>
>> -- 
>>
>>
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> -- 
> Michael Korcuska
> Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
> mkorcuska at sakaifoundation.org
> phone: +1 510-931-6559
> mobile (US): +1 510-599-2586
> skype: mkorcuska
>
>
>