Jim Higson wrote:
Hi all.
I'm testing the ground for writing a java aplet based mini-editor for
mediawiki (and maybe other wikis, although the lack of a standard makes that
difficult).
What I have in mind is a relatively light applet - a more specialised version
of the generic text input, that creates well formatted wiki markup, by
allowing a syntax highlighted or whysiwyg view of the article.
This wouldn't require comunication with the server, other than uploading the
article, as happens now.
The program would be GPL, and as far as possible be designed to work with the
GNU classpath.
What do you think of this idea? My main aim is to make editing easier for
non-technical users.
Jim
It's a noble idea, but doing it properly (where it could replace the
normal mode of editing on a mature wiki like wikipedia) is *hard*.
Doing basic wysiwyg stuff (bold, italic, links, paragraphs) is fairly
straightforward (particularly if classpath's implementation of swing's
rich text edit thingy is in good shape). Byt wysiwyg editing of hard
stuff like floating images and tables essentially entails reimplementing
rather a lot of the browser's display code in java. Even then,
everytime your conception of how things will look and the browser's
conception differ, you're no longer remotely wysiwyg. And then there's
stylesheets. So I think a full-featured solution is essentially
impractical, and certainly not worthwhile.
What is practical, and I think is worthwhile, is using the browser's
rendering engine itself for wysiwyg editing (or, in the interim, wysiwyg
preview). Implement the editor using DOM (which I fear means "in
javascript" too, in practice). I think there's enough support in DOM2
to do everything necessary, and you can realistically hope to handle
advanced stuff like images, tables, etc.
I don't know how it will work on broken browsers like IE.
FIn
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W.Finlay McWalter [[User:Finlay McWalter]]
http://www.mcwalter.org
"With the thoughts you'd be thinkin', You could be another Lincoln..."