[mylyn-dev] RE: [mylyn-integrators] Mylyn WikiText component

["Mik Kersten" <mik@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree with David’s reasoning below, both in terms of current practical focus (developers) and in terms of overall goals.  This is probably a good time to scope the goals of the WikiText component, which could follow the example of other Mylyn components, e.g.:

 

“To provide an API for wiki markup, reference implementations for select open source wiki dialects, and lightweight markup editing tools that integrate this functionality with Eclipse workbench editors and Mylyn task editors.”

 

Extensions could then support both additional dialects and more editing functionality.

 

Mik

 

From: David Green [mailto:dgreen99@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 11:32 AM
To: mik@xxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Ketan Padegaonkar; Mylyn Integrators list; mylyn-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [mylyn-integrators] Mylyn WikiText component

 

Something else came to mind:  For developers there is no faster way to write Java code than using a source editor.  It's hard to beat the speed and agility of a keyboard.  To me, writing markup is the fastest (and easiest) way to get it done.  I will always prefer a source editor for this kind of thing.

 

David

 

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 7:25 AM, David Green <dgreen99@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

With any feature it's important to evaluate the benefits.  I would guess that most current users of Mylyn are developers.  These people are are used to seeing source code.  The source viewer provides a 'good enough' approach to highlighting the markup, so for these users I don't see much benefit in hiding markup, given the draw-backs and effort required to create a 'hidden markup' editor.

 

With the advent of Tasktop the profile of the user-base is likely to change to less technical users.  For these people a WYSIWYG editor would be more beneficial, since the idea of source code to them would be somewhat foreign.

 

As demand increases we should continue to reevaluate priorities and if the need arrises, we can look at a 'hidden markup' approach.  Note that to build a great editor with these capabilities will be extremely difficult, especially considering some types of markup (eg: tables).  To loosely quote Mik, even very large companies with unlimited resources haven't been able to get it completely right.

 

Of course all of this is my opinion -- I would be interested to see some community feedback on this issue.

 

David

 

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 6:58 AM, Mik Kersten <mik@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

That's good to hear Ketan.

Currently the only way to make the markup disappear is if you click the
Preview tab, in which case the markup is rendered as HTML.  David Green and
I had some additional conversation about this, and thought that going with
the rich markup mode was the best compromise.  But I could imagine something
like the following:
* Provide a "Hide Markup" button.
* For inserting new markup, Ctrl+Space or a toolbar button is used
* In this mode, the markup does not appear in the source viewer, but does
appear in the backing document.

There is trickiness with this approach.  For example, if I start hitting
backspace over something that has nested markup, at some point the markup
has to get deleted.  For example, Microsoft Word still has usability issues
with these ranges of markup, which is why sometimes a word will become bold
if it gets into a stray markup region due to deleting characters or
paragraphs.  But it could be that a few simple heuristics here would be
sufficient.

David: have you considered a "Hide Markup" mode?

Mik

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ketan Padegaonkar [mailto:ketanpadegaonkar@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 11:42 PM
> To: mik@xxxxxxxxxxx; Mylyn Integrators list
> Cc: mylyn-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [mylyn-integrators] Mylyn WikiText component
>
>
> On 14-Aug-08, at 6:20 AM, Mik Kersten wrote:
>
> > Here's a summary of the new Mylyn WikiText component:
> >
> >     http://tasktop.com/blog/?p=37
>
> I've looked at Texile-J before, looked at the screenshot and find that
> integrating mylyn with texile-j is indeed a good idea.
>
> We've been working on a similar WYSIWYG editor, however the markup is
> *still* visible, which does not make it a true WYSIWYG editor. It is
> still better than having no WYSIWYG. Are there any plans to make this
> markup disappear in the near future?
>
> -- Ketan