[Using Sakai] [Management] Looking for feedback on a proposal for a new Wiki integration effort

[John Norman]

This is where the project behind rWiki started. We set out to integrate XWiki. Indeed it is the source of the name ("r" having something to do with the underlying engine I think). IIRC examination of the XWiki code base revealed that they duplicated a lot of Sakai functionality and wrapped a core wiki engine. The conclusion was that rather than maintain a large lump of duplicative code, we would use the same core engine with a thin wrapper and achieve a tight integration with Sakai. Ian Boston can fill in more of the background.

But if I am remembering correctly, then for integrating XWiki to make sense we would want to believe the situation had changed in some way. Possibilities include: they have swapped out the core wiki engine, they are maintaining the core wiki engine themselves now and have improved it, we now want some of their group oriented functionality, we don't want tight integration, etc.

Personally, I would be more inclined to to develop the entity-picker and page authoring Proof of Concept we did for Sakai 2 as part of the groundwork for Sakai 3. This connects with Chuck Hedrick's course builder work. My reason is that most people don't use a wiki because they want to use a wiki, they use it because they want to create html pages in the system for their audience to read and they want those html pages to be able to incorporate content from within Sakai and from outside Sakai.

We have had a few people saying they want their students to become familiar with wiki syntax, but generally they just want to create pages.

John

On 10 Nov 2010, at 15:38, Adam Hocek wrote:

> Hello all, 
> 
> We have been looking at an alternative to Sakai's current rwiki and after some investigation have been leaning toward XWiki and now feel we're at a point to share this with this community.  I have created a confluence page that covers some of the investigative work we've done and also takes a closer look at what would be involved to implement a XWiki integration with Sakai. The confluence page is at http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/SAKDEV/XWiki+Integration. 
> Please take a look at the link and feel free to share your thoughts, suggestions and comments on this.  Any input would be beneficial to the work we're doing and to the community.  Secondly, we would also like to see if anyone is interested in assisting with either the development (Sakai-side or wiki-side) or testing efforts.  If so please indicate in what way you would be willing to help out and how much time you could dedicate. 
> Anyone interested in participating should try to respond  before the end of November. 
> 
> Thank you, 
> 
> Adam Hocek
> Information Technology
> Marist College
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