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This is an old revision of SuggestionBox made by s-144-27.resnet.unb.ca on 2004-10-01 00:16:23.

 

Suggestion Box


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Editable tables
I don't know if this goes against the Wiki way of doing things, but it would be nice to configure a table in which users could enter data into and then 'submit' (click a submit button I suppose) and have it saved to the page without having to 'edit page'.
--ArisStathakis

Can you post a link to a site where you can enter data without editing the page? I'm not sure what that would look like. - JsnX

GmBowen had something related here. I can't seem to get his page to load, therefore I've linked it to its google-cache. Basically, it's a form input thing that allows you to create tables row by row and edit data cell by cell. Very tedious to initialise, but i suppose it could be handy just to click on celldata to edit it (and view data if the user has readonly access). This method is a lot more intuitive than the current method of creating tables, but it would involve flatdb (or a new/seperate mysql schema). Just adding to the discussion, I don't believe that this suggestion is the ultimate solution. -- Sam

The "spreadsheet" (or, interactive table if you want) script uses a MYSQL table assigned by default to the page name, although the logged in user can "force" another table name. Another "action" script allows just showing the table without the interactive nature. So the user can enter the table components using the "spreadsheet", and then show it on the page using the "showtable name=" script. The script allows one to calculate sum, average, count, and frequency (at this point only on the columns) and is intended to provide simple on-line spreadsheet functions for kids working on science projects which they can then embed in a written report. I'm moving the server right now which is why it isn't up. It will be in the next week. The script is a (greatly) modified version of one available from this site...http://www.ka.sara.nl/home/boven/ .... Because it's intended for kids it is reasonably user friendly, although lacking many formatting abilities that "adult" users are used to -- Mike

My 2 cents on tables. I think we should consider in the long run the possibility of a major refactoring of the syntax for tabular data. The current table action is extremely user-unfriendly (just have a look at the source of ConfigurationOptions). Moreover, the table action does not convert wikka-formatted strings, which in some cases is a little annoying. It think a nice idea would be to have tables directly handled in the formatter, instead of using an action. I like very much the wacko approach to tables, maybe we could do even better and find a more intuitive syntax. -- DarTar

I haven't checked this out yet, but doesn't UsingHTML pretty much solve the problem on table syntax? Now it's just figuring out how to edit a cell without editting a page. --Sam

markup of diff pages
The 'diff' facility is if course nice - and essential to a Wiki. But I note the differences are marked up only with classes which match to coloring in the stylesheet. If we're doing XHTML, we could do that a little better (as well as more accessible!): the del and ins elements are created to markup deletions and insertions: fully semantic markup!

My proposal:

See 9.4 Marking document changes: The INS and DEL elements for all the details (HTML 4.01 since that's where all the semantics are).
--JavaWoman (standards junkie)

This is related - I found that the diff engine and page history sometimes forgot to close tags. With a list of lists, the indents would get carried forward. Check out my hack. Not CSS compliant by any means, but then again, your suggestion isn't either (list tags are not closed etc etc). I reckon you would probably have to parse each addition/deletion through the SafeHTML checker. -- Sam

Assuming you mean XHTML compliant (sorry) my suggestion certainly is (believe me, I would never suggest anything that isn't XHTML compliant) - I just forgot to mention that closing tags properly is a prerequisite... although I did point to the actual standard which indicates how ins and del must maintain proper tag nesting.
You're right though, I did notice that lists don't seem to be closed properly. I think that should be fixed first (it's a bug, not sure it's recorded as such yet) - then you can do more semantic markup.
-- JavaWoman (standards junkie)


showing comments
Working on a test installation, I found the user setting "Show comments by default" did not work. Testing it here, I found it doesn't work here, either.
Haven't dug in the code yet to find where this should happen (but will).

I'm quite happy with Wikka's capabilities out of the box - good starting point! :) I'll likely stay with it - but I'll probably make some extensions... (such as an option to require confirmation of a registration before allowing edit access - validates email).

Great work! JavaWoman

It does work.... just not as might be expected. Comment preference is stored for each page as you browse the wiki. So, if you browse a few pages with comments not showing, it remembers this. Then if you update your preferences and return to the same pages, it still remembers that your previous preference was not to see comments on those pages.

Try this:

- JsnX

Right. I see it does work. ;) Somewhat, um, counterintuitive, though. So I guess my suggestion then becomes that when a user configuration is changed, this change should immediately be stored in the user session/cookie so it's active right from that moment (without closing the browser). That would, I think, be more in line with expected behavior. Possible? (I haven't looked at that area of the code yet.)
JavaWoman.


It occurs to me that some kind of "counter" for how many times the wikipage has been viewed might be a useful "action" for somebody to be able to use...this way a page author would know how often somebody has gone to the page & this might help focus development (especially for those keeners that have multiple pages/projects). [and I agree with the contributor below....Wikkawiki is great software]


Language support

I was searching almost whole site to check what kind of languages are supported by this wiki. I was unsuccessful. Is it possible to put somewhere (main page, release note, futures section…) some information about languages they are supported?

Thanks MDD


Kudos! Excellent software!

I wanted to add some functionality to my WakkaWiki site, but found that they disappeared. Upgrading to Wikka gave me all the features that I wanted, and a bunch more.

Good job all!

-- Jeff


Problem: Scrolling in the search - field

Not worth to mention but now I am here I write it. Text in the search field is a little bit scrollable. Again ... ;-)

-- SkyWalk


Question: note?

It is me again! What is the function of the "Please add a note on your edit" - field? Again and again: Keep on the good work.

-- SkyWalk

this note is shown in some lists like the RecentChanges and the page revisions. it's just a little helper to keep the wiki organized and has no effect on the page itself. use it whenever you can to drop a short abstract of what has changed, even if you have corrected some typos to let others know that no essential changes were made. it is a really useful feature --DreckFehler


Question: PHP 4.3. and "mysql_escape_string()"?

For the Wikka Wakka Wiki 1.1.4.0 you need at least PHP 4.3 because the "mysql_real_escape_string()" in wakka.php is only available in PHP 4.3. A lot of hoster just offering PHP 4.1 or 4.2. Then you have to replace "mysql_real_escape_string()" with "mysql_escape_string()". What was the reason for the replacement in the new release? Again: Keep on the good work.

-- SkyWalk


Problem: Five Line Breaks

Just a small problem i found. If you insert five line breaks at the end of a site, the footer jumps into the box.
After all a nice wikki. Keep on the good work.

-- SkyWalk


DB Export

ExportDB : as i'm discovering Wikki (and WikkaWiki) and playing with it on my main server and on my laptop (which too runs an Apache installation), I
was needing a quickly way of making export of my database. So I wrote a quick (and dirty ...) export page to get all the replace SQL commands to populate an instance.
I too may use this in the future to quickly backup an online Wikki site. See this additionnal page for the code : CodeExportdb

-- SergiO


Alternate stylesheets

I really appreciate alternate stylesheets (classical one, more elaborated, aso). To allow them to be configured in WikkaWiki, you could just add :

* In wikka.config.php this line (for exampe just after "stylesheet" => "wikka.css", ) :

  "alternates_stylesheets" => array("wikka1.css" => 'Wikka 1', 
									"wikka2.css" => 'Wikka 2', 
									"wikka3.css" => 'Wikka 3'),


* in header.php this two lines just after the last link and before the "style" box :

<?php
  // Alternate links
  foreach ($this->GetConfigValue("alternates_stylesheets") as $alternate_css => $alternate_name)
  {
	echo '<link rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" href="' . $css_path . $alternate_css . '" media="screen" title="' . $alternate_name . '" />';
  }
?>


(I've too added a $css_path variable,
$css_path = 'css/';
)
I don't thing that various "media=print" CSS would be really usefull.
Of course you need a brower like FireFox / Mozilla to easily switch them, otherwise you have to take care of the stylesheets' switch directly in your pages [ see http://www.openweb.eu.org/ for example ].

--SergiO



I was converting a document to Wikka markup format, and I was trying to display MySQL (Console) Table output using the "Code" formatters %%. Everything that appears in a code block is formatted using a monospace font (as I expect), however, since the Edit page handler converts every instance of 4 spaces to a tab, the spacing is thrown off. Below is an example (Select some of the whitespace with your mouse to see the tabs):
----------------------------------------------------------------
OBJECT_TYPE		  COUNT(*)
------------------ ----------
FUNCTION				   12
INDEX					  55
LOB						 4
PACKAGE					 2
PACKAGE BODY				2
SEQUENCE					9
TABLE					  37
TRIGGER					 6
VIEW						1
9 rows selected
no rows selected
--------------------------------------------------------------------


The edit page handler seems to convert spaces to tabs throughout the entire document, including Code blocks.

From edit.php
11:		// replace 4 consecutive spaces with tab character
12:		$body = str_replace("	", "\t", $body);

Is there any way to make the edit handler leave the spaces alone inside of code blocks?
Thanks! -RichardTerry

Noted. Try commenting out that line for a temporary workaround. -- JsnX
// $body = str_replace("	", "\t", $body);



- Wikka is the best ever. Keep up the good work! ;)

- I think it would be nice if you could use wikka markup (**bold**, //italics//, __underline__, etc.) inside of tables. - RichardTerry

Richard, thanks for the feedback. It is on my agenda to look at another solution for tables. My plan is to allow straight HTML table syntax after running it through the "safehtml" checker. But I need to check that there are no security risks with this first. Also, I'll take a peak at your suggestion too. -- JsnX

- See MarkHissinkMuller for things I would like to see in Wakka/Wacko/Wikka. Feel free to add/discuss.

- I'd like a way to attach files to a page without having to include the {{files}} action. I like using the action to link to attachments, but I'd rather click a link at the bottom of each page to reach the attach form or to see which files are attached to the page. (I'm a PHP newbie, so It would probably take me some time to make a handler to do what I want.) Actually, now I'm kind of used to having all of my attached images displaying at the bottom of the screen, so this isn't a big deal. If I really don't want the attachment list (usually a bunch of images) to display I just remove the {{files}} from the page. -RichardTerry


- Not a suggestion, but problems: with installing 1.1.3 on a Win 32 Apache 2, with Php 4.3.8 and Mysql 4.1.3. Upgrading from wakka 0.1.2 didn't work (ended with: "creating comment table - failed - hmm"). So I thought I'd do a fresh install. Everything went fine, but there seems to be some problem with utf8. Even when I set the charset in header.php to utf-8, the page is all scrambled. However, in phpMyAdmin, the text in the pages table shows up fine. Any clues? (I need utf-8, by the way ...) BirgitKellner.

Sorry if this was the wrong place for posting this, and feel free to move it to a more appropriate one.

wikka don't support utf-8 yet. this issue is discussed here: WikkaInternationalization (and should be moved from there to its own page, 'cause it's not a trivial problem ;) --moved to HandlingUTF8 ). anyway, i'm afraid you won't find comprehensive help in that discussion. it's not enough to change the meta-tag. that only tells the browser to assume a charset, which in fact isn't used.

i haven't spent much time on that issue, although i am (or should be) interested in it. but be assured that it's not a simple config-value to be squeezed to solve the problem. i hope the discussion mentioned above will get more precise in the next days, as i would appreciate any hint how to start to despair of it ;) i think in long terms it's a must to support different charsets. -- DreckFehler

- It would be Really Nice to be able to have an Add Page link that allows a user to create a new page without having to edit an existing one. (I don't belive this is currently possible, I'm a newbie however) Perhaps this could be achieved via a simple HTML Form that prompts the user for a Page Name, and Category. It would be even better if the Category was selectable (dropdown list) from existing categories. And to top the whole thing off, it would be perfect if it was possible to define Template files (eg. per Category) where by when a user creates a new page of category ABC, the template file for ABC is used as the default page text. This would aid in keeping some kind of consistancy between pages of the same category. (ie. for one thing the correct category definition could be placed in the appropriate location/style). An Add Page link would posssibly be usefull on the standard Category pages, especially as the Category is already known.

- It would be nice if ACLs were somehow inheiritable from their creating pages (Created either the current way or via the above described method)

- Is it possible to define User Groups to simplify editing ACLs also.

- Finally, (although I think I can possibly do this one myself) , On the Editor Page a link to the standard FormattingRules page would be most useful. Especially if it opened in a different window.

Regards Simon H.

Resolved Suggestions


Mod rewrite and a problem
Hi there. First, I'd like to thank you all for your work with Wikka -- it's just great! I have some problems though. On my www.bronzeworks.org/Wikka/ experimental wikka site I'm not able to use mod_rewrite, which is annoying by itself, but when I set the rewrite parameter in the config file to "0", the scripts add an <input> tag to the code at the beginning of the footer (which is a form if I'm correct). This input tag gets no close tag so I added a "/" at the end. Will this screw up things somehow or is this little fix enough?
Good catch. Adding the end slash should be fine. It will be added by default in the next Wikka release. -- Jsnx

Another thing. I feel a bit stupid for asking, but how do I remove the underline from the links in the footer. This is not set in the style sheet nor added in footer.php. Ot not in a place where I see at least. -- JockeAndersson
Jocke, in the style sheet [wikka.css by default], add "text-decoration: none;" to the smallprint style. Or am I not understanding the problem? -- JsnX
.smallprint a {
color: #987;
text-decoration: none;
}

It doesn't really do it. I tried it before, and I added the code snippet again, but without the wanted result. Where in the code is the underlining set? The header link also has it's text underlined and I can't find where this is set. The stylesheet doesn't contain any such tags, and I can't seem to find them in the other files. -- JockeAndersson

The reason the above addition to smallprint doesn't work is that the links are visited meaning the pseudo-class a:visited must be defined as well with "text-decoration: none" in it. There is no definition for a:visited in the css by default. Perhaps this should be added to Wikka's code? -- JockeAndersson

Sure, I'll add it. Just curious though, what web browser are you using? Internet Explorer does not show underlined links as you have described...at least not for me. -- JsnX

I'm currently using Mozilla Firefox, but I'm testing pages in IE as well. The underlines were only visible in Firefox. IE is usually the one to screw up page rendering, not being fully standards-compliant and all. Oh, and the code could use an a:active definition as well. Be sure to define them in correct order though: a visited hover active. W3C were specific about that for some reason. -- JockeAndersson

Thanks for the tip. By the way, your site looks awesome. -- JsnX

You really think so? Thanks!! :) Much of the general layout comes from A List Apart's site, but adapted to my needs. I've had a site running for a while but can't find the time to update it properly. I believe Wikka will change all that and am seriously thinking of replacing my ordinary site with a Wikka wiki. The forum will still be phpbb, but the site itself could really benefit from the pros of Wikka. I second MarkHissinkMuller MarkHissinkMullers suggestions for improvement. Especially the possibility to manage ACLs based on user groups as well as individual users, would be great. -- JockeAndersson

I've provided the php code for a modification of the pageindex.php action which will improve showing the index in high-use sites. You can see the code at GmBowen. I'm not a programmer myself, but have one working for me and he modified the code to have it work like this. You can see it in action (LOL) if you go to http://bowen4-srv.lakeheadu.ca/wikitxt/wakka.php?wakka=PageIndex (as it's set up it's defaulting to show "all", but you can set that to any single available letter if you wish by adding a parameter, e.g., {{pageindex start="C"}}). -- Mike Bowen


I use stylesheet for xml, I don't know anything about compatibility to validators :
Add this to, for example handler/page/revisions.xml.php:
<?php
$xml = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>\n";
$xml .= '<?xml-stylesheet href="' . $this->GetConfigValue("base_url") .'/css/xml.css" type="text/css"?' .">\n";
?>


Add a file named xml.css in css/, the content is like XmlStyleSheet
--DotMG




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