Pre-install NatEditContrib

The NatEditContrib is a JavaScript editor "à la Wikipedia" for TWiki. It makes editing and learning TML easier. It makes sense to ship the NatEditContrib with the standard TWiki distribution:

• The toolbar acts as a tutorial/assistant to learn the TML.
• People are familiar with edit toolbars due to popularity of Wikipedia.
• MediaWiki, DokuWiki and some other wikis ship with a toolbar; from a competitive point of view we should do what is considered "standard".

This is a proposed TWikiFeature04x02.

Note: PreInstallSmartEditAddOn was suggested earlier. It did not make it because it has performance issues on IE.

-- Contributors: PeterThoeny - 08 Apr 2007

Discussion

Does it make sense to integrate this into the PatternSkin and ClassicSkin, or to keep it as a separate contrib?

-- PeterThoeny - 08 Apr 2007

Is there a demo site where we can try it without having to install it?

-- KennethLavrsen - 08 Apr 2007

Hmm. It tool ONE line ' * Set SKIN = natedit, pattern' and I have it running on my Merlin test server.

Looks good. A few bugs and a few things I would like altered but looks very good.

-- KennethLavrsen - 08 Apr 2007

I was a bit quick when I said it looks good. When I edit this URL in IE 6 - IE freezes and has to be killed via the task manager.

I also miss some basic features like bullets and the worst thing to edit and create in TWiki - Tables - is not addressed by this contrib.

Bullets should be easy to add. Tables - that is a tough one.

I cannot see any functionality in Firefox on the abandon button. Nothing happens when I press it.

So yes promissing. But needs some work before I find it stable enough to be in the distribution. Especially the IE hanging needs to be resolved.

The topic that hangs is http://merlin.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Myweb/WebHome and it happens the minute you edit it. I have turned the contrib off for now but you can copy the topic to your own TWiki and try.

-- KennethLavrsen - 08 Apr 2007

This works fine with my IE 6.0. I added some feedback to the NatEditContribDev topic.

-- PeterThoeny - 09 Apr 2007

We are two that have reported that the Javascript used in the plugin makes Internet Explorer hang. I do not know how I can debug in IE. It is not TWiki that hangs. It is the browser. It hangs so much that you have to control-alt-delete and kill the process and then all your IE windows die.

-- KennethLavrsen - 15 Apr 2007

I do not see any commitment to finish the implementation of NatEditContrib so it does not hang. And without a working Plugin I see no reason to vote for it. So let us keep this open until the developer of NatEditContrib has addressed the stability issue.

-- KennethLavrsen - 23 Apr 2007

I am wondering if the stability issue should be handled as a regular bug? E.g., do not delay the decision for a useful feature because of a bug.

I think this is an excellent candidate for TWiki 4.2!

-- PeterThoeny - 24 Apr 2007

Please test the new release.

-- MichaelDaum - 24 Apr 2007

I will most surely test again

Peter - I wanted it to work because the proposal is to add it here very close to 4.2 so stability is part of the decision.

Will return.

Anyone else wish to voice concern against including this in 4.2?

Or ever?

In any case I will test and if it now works and noone says anything against then we have a consensus decision

I added Michael as committed developer because you seem pretty committed to making it work and once working it is only a matter of changing a MANIFEST to include it in the distro.

-- KennethLavrsen - 25 Apr 2007

I can confirm that it no longer hangs

But there are still open bugs that we need to fix. Or remove the feature if it cannot be fixed.

They are all in the NatEditContribDev

Most important are

Undo does not work in Firefox. If it cannot be made working then remove it. We can deploy it without. Actually I would rather have a button that simulates control-Z. Browsers support undo but it is hidden. There is no menu point. But control-Z works both in FF and IE. So that would be a much better feature for the same button. If you really need to start from scratch then you can still cancel out and edit again.

And the signature needs to loose the = signs round the -- in the signature.

All this is fixable. So I now pull back my reservation and agree that we should include this Contrib in 4.2. It should however per default be disabled because we have not tested it much. But we can enable it per default in a 4.2.1 patch release which usually follow soon after. Enabling is easy and we will put in the release note a text describing how to add ONE line in Main.TWikiPreferences.

Let us give other community member a few more days to speak up if they have concerns.

-- KennethLavrsen - 25 Apr 2007

Not sure whether these issue belong here.

When we PreInstallNatEditContrib in TWiki 4.2. it would be cool to have the same button design in NatEditContrib and KupuContrib to ease adaption of both editors for new users.

Furthermore it would be great if both preinstalled editors would have the same appearence. What i want to say is, only the text area should differ.

Otherwise users have to get used to two different layouts/designs...

We use NatSkin at our companys Twiki and what we really like about is that you still know where you are during edit. If you use KupuContrib you don't really know where you are as there's just text area and a small note in the title saying Web.Topic

-- CarloSchulz - 26 Apr 2007

Still no concern raised as such which is good. To drive the implementation to everybodies satisfaction is now best done by closing all the Tasks Items that I have raised based on the Dev topic of the topic. Carlo your input is also in a bug item.

For quick overview visit Tasks:NatEditContrib

-- KennethLavrsen - 27 Apr 2007

The Contrib is marked ContactAuthorFirst. I would like to see this lifted on a default extension.

-- KennethLavrsen - 27 Apr 2007

One of the things in the core engine that hinders a further redesign of the edit screen is that "Add form", "Replace form" and the form itself must all be at the same place, that is once you added a form it is placed at the exact html code position where the "Add form" button is. Can we remove that limitation, please.

-- MichaelDaum - 27 Apr 2007

This one has not moved at all since April. So target becomes GeorgetownRelease.

-- KennethLavrsen - 03 Jun 2007

This one did move and most concerns have been taken into account, bugs have been fixed, but it ran out of testers. Later on, PatterSkin changed making it hard to get NatEdit functional on a 4.2 as well as on a 4.1.2 PatternSkin and NatSkin. I am all fine to defer it to the next release (or even keep it separate) as I have a couple of more ideas on the interface that I want to test out first in a couple of independent releases anyway.

One issue however has to be fixed in the core: decouple the "Add form" button from displaying it. I am only able to customize the "Add form" interface with some uggly javascript in NatSkin. It is perferable to make that less of a hack.

-- MichaelDaum - 05 Jun 2007

I agree with Michael, the concerns have been addressed, e.g. things are moving along. Because of this one can say that this is a "consensus reached" item, although it was not marked as such in time. I would still favor this to go into the 4.2 release provided it is tested and stable.

-- PeterThoeny - 05 Jun 2007

The proposal is correctly accepted by Consensus. I forgot to flip the state. But it was not implemented before the feature freeze deadline like adding it to the basic MANIFEST so it became part of the standard default pseudo-install and making sure it was working. And as of today it is still not implemented.

The NatEditContrib does not at all work in MAIN and hasn't for a while and it was not addressed the weeks before the deadline so I saw that as not moving towards being in the release. And I find this sad because I also expected this to be a very cool feature.

We agreed to making a feature freeze. Peter, you send the signal that everybody can just ignore the feature freeze.

I must also say that it concerns me that the PatternSkin has changed so much that it breaks a contrib like this one. I fear that people having tailored the PatternSkin in 4.0 or 4.1 will face a nightmare upgrade.

-- KennethLavrsen - 05 Jun 2007

As an alternative, especially as I've just added some funciontality to NatEditContrib - what if we installed both NatEditContrib and JQueryPlugin on TWiki.org, or the bugs system... (From what I've seen the 4.2 PatternSkin only needs to become a little more backwards compatible to fix the problem).

-- SvenDowideit - 03 Aug 2007

I don't really want anything on the Tasks system that isn't part of the release. You could always install a parallel instance of TWiki, though, and lard that up instead.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 03 Aug 2007

I'd like to revert the decision on this old project. I don't want NatEditPlugin to become a core plugin.

-- MichaelDaum - 09 Dec 2009

Commenting is disabled while not logged in