[Docs] Refactoring, porting Wiki content, and evaluating Daisy

[Mark Leicester <ma...@efurbishment.com>]

Hi all,

Along with this kind of notifying post to the mailing list, I'm also 
keeping a blog of my Daisy Documentation work: 
http://www.planetcocoon.com/blog/category/daisy (or there's an RSS feed 
here: http://www.planetcocoon.com/blog/category/daisy/feed) This post 
is from http://www.planetcocoon.com/node/2276.

                  - o -

Last night I refactored, edited and added some content to the existing 
Daisy repository according to the structure discussed yesterday 
afternoon. I also began the process of converting some Wiki content to 
Daisy.

I created a CategoryInDaisy page in the Wiki, so that it is easy to 
record a wiki page as having been transferred. Perhaps we could have 
CategoryDaisyInProgress, CategoryDaisyComplete? I also recorded on the 
Wiki page where a piece of content has gone (i.e. a Wiki page may be 
split or combined).

After about 3 hours solid Daisy usage (as a consumer rather than as a 
developer) I'm quite impressed. The positives for me so far are:

     * The usability of the WYSIWYG editor is good, and I only needed to 
swap into raw HTML view a few times (to remove <p> tags within pasted 
<li> for example).
     * Daisy was very quick and responsive (with occasional pauses/slow 
round-trips).
     * The "Duplicate" feature is very useful in refactoring work (i.e. 
splitting one page into two or more).
     * Easy and intuitive editing of the navigation map.

On the other hand, the negatives are:

     * Newly created pages are invisible until they are published (by 
someone with publishing rights). It's a little like flying blind. I had 
to remember document IDs in order to cross-link (unpublished pages 
don't show up in the link chooser). I couldn't review my newly created 
pages unless I edited them (if I view a newly created page I just see 
"This document is not yet published.").
     * I had to edit the navigation structure to see my changes. Again, 
adding document IDs/labels to this structure had to be done from 
memory.
     * Switching between the navigation structure editor and the page 
editor was tedious. I understand the power of this separation, but from 
a usability point of view it would be nice to make the management of a 
page's location possible from the page itself.

I think it's going to prove difficult for editors to make significant 
structural changes due to this lack of visibility and immediate 
feedback. Incidentally, despite not having publish permissions, I can 
still see a checkbox saying "Publish changes immediately" when I edit a 
page.

I may have overlooked better ways of using Daisy, so please let me know 
if there are things I could do differently! As Upayavira said: "As to 
whether this is the right way - I'm sure there are more technically 
perfect approaches. The thing about this one is that it has the 
community behind it[...] And that has to be worth something."

Steven, Helma, et al, keep up the great work on Daisy!

Mark

Re: [Docs] Refactoring, porting Wiki content, and evaluating Daisy

[Steven Noels <st...@outerthought.org>]

On 10 Jun 2005, at 04:07, Mark Leicester wrote:

>     * Newly created pages are invisible until they are published (by 
> someone with publishing rights). It's a little like flying blind. I 
> had to remember document IDs in order to cross-link (unpublished pages 
> don't show up in the link chooser). I couldn't review my newly created 
> pages unless I edited them (if I view a newly created page I just see 
> "This document is not yet published.").

You can access unpublished versions from the "Versions" overview.

Check http://cocoon.zones.apache.org/daisy/cocooninaction/20.html, 
http://cocoon.zones.apache.org/daisy/cocooninaction/20/versions.html 
and http://cocoon.zones.apache.org/daisy/cocooninaction/20/version/2

>     * I had to edit the navigation structure to see my changes. Again, 
> adding document IDs/labels to this structure had to be done from 
> memory.

So I guess unpublished documents should also be listed when doing 
"insert by query".

>     * Switching between the navigation structure editor and the page 
> editor was tedious. I understand the power of this separation, but 
> from a usability point of view it would be nice to make the management 
> of a page's location possible from the page itself.

Yes - though it's very hard to make people believe that THERE'S NO 
HIERARCHY IN THE REPOSITORY when content can be inserted from a 
taxonomy.

> I think it's going to prove difficult for editors to make significant 
> structural changes due to this lack of visibility and immediate 
> feedback. Incidentally, despite not having publish permissions, I can 
> still see a checkbox saying "Publish changes immediately" when I edit 
> a page.

Useful feedback!

</Steven>
-- 
Steven Noels                            http://outerthought.org/
Outerthought - Open Source Java & XML            An Orixo Member
Read my weblog at            http://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/
stevenn at outerthought.org                stevenn at apache.org