MediaWikiHistoryAndComparisonInTWiki

Reference

See CombineHistoryPluginWithCompareRevisionsAddOn for specific details.

Comments

I find TWiki's History-and-RevComparison features poor. I find the corresponding features in MediaWiki (aka WikiPedia) to be excellent.

I also see these recent TWiki additions: HistoryPlugin CompareRevisionsAddOn

Might these above 2 Plugins/AddOns work in tandem to give TWiki the excellent MediaWiki history-and-rev-comparison capability?

It seems that at least one fo these additions were designed to do so (at least per HistoryPlugin's docs). Was this the intent for both?

Were these 2 Plugins designed to work together? Do they? Or will I need to do some glueware coding work in order to get these 2 things to play nicely together? (I'm a seasoned software developer and sysadmin, but I've never managed template mechanisms before...but I'm sure I can learn if need be.) If so, can someone provide any guidance as to how this might proceed?

I'm looking to eliminate one of the last big reasons (I know of yet, anyway) for me and my company to go with MediaWiki instead of TWiki.

-- MattEngland - 09 Apr 2005

If you can describe how you would like the mechanisms to work, then it may be more sensible to implement the feature you want close to the core. Give us a hint?

-- CrawfordCurrie - 10 Apr 2005

Personally, I agree that MediaWikis history features are better than TWiki's, but from a user perspective I think they could be improved upon. So here are my 2ct:

What sells wiki: the free-for-all editing is 'safe' because of revision history and reverting.

What is actually the case in TWiki: once there have been more than a few revisions, it becomes difficult to get a true overview of the history of changes (who, what, when) and (and this is also the case in MediaWiki afaik) actually reverting to an earlier version can not be done with a 'click on the button'

Most features are already there:

• In HistoryPlugin, the same handy overview of the history is generated as in MediaWiki, except...
• Allow the user to type a short description of the changes (as discussed in AddCheckInComment)
• In CompareRevisionsAddOn, even more functionality is available than in MediaWiki (for one, in Mediawiki I see a lot of HTML stuff, which my users will certainly not like to see)

My advice (as a non-coder & non-sysadmin trying to introduce TWiki as a knowledge base in a R&D organisation) is: implement these functions in the core and make sure it works and looks amazing - it should be one of the killer functions of a wiki.

-- JosMaccabiani - 10 Apr 2005

To answer CrawfordCurrie's question about the example hint:

Copied from HistoryLikeInMediawiki:

In Mediawiki you see all versions in chronological order (each on one line, just the version's date, change comment, and editor) with little checkboxes to their left. You can select two versions and compare them then, the older one will be displayed on the left, the newer one on the right, changes highlighted. See Wikipedia for examples. -- ChristianKohl - 28 Dec 2004

Also, see these examples from meta.wikimedia.org (part of the effort to develop MediaWiki)...

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_DTD&action=history http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_DTD&diff=0&oldid=70331

...and Wikipedia.org, the every-growing "Wiki Encyclopedia":

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Redundant_array_of_independent_disks&action=history

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Redundant_array_of_independent_disks&diff=0&oldid=11197889

I like to think that CompareRevisionsAddOn is even more capable (from what I can see of the screen shots) then MediaWiki, because of its "interleaved" comparison.

Why main question is this (and it's mostly directed at JChristophFuchs, the apparent developer of CompareRevisionsAddOn and History.Plugin): Can I "plug in" these to Plugins/AddOns to my vanilla, out-of-the-box Cairo TWiki build and get them to work together very similarly (if not just like) MediaWiki/WikiPedia?

As JosMaccabiani states:

My advice (as a non-coder & non-sysadmin trying to introduce TWiki as a knowledge base in a R&D organisation) is: implement these functions in the core and make sure it works and looks amazing - it should be one of the killer functions of a wiki.

I strongly agree, and I strongly back a longer-term effort to do this, for the addition reasons that JosMaccabiani above: organizational buy-in on a Wiki is tough, and showing how easy it is to manage history and changes is key to adoption. Further, reverting back to a known revision easily does not seem to be covered with the Plugins mentioned here (unless said Plugins are more capable then I understand), and I too would like that addressed...although I do not need it immediately.

For the immediate future, I'm simply trying to get these MediaWiki-like features working NOW, in the current TWiki that I'm just now installing (for the first time, as a complete TWiki rookie), and I'm hoping I can get comments from the developers (namely JChristophFuchs) before I just "jump in and try it"...which I may be doing shortly anyway...just to see how much effort I have in front of me, and try and learn the integrate process the "easy way" (from those who have gone before me) instead of trying to go it alone and have to learn things the hard way that might have already been known.

When and if I get this all working, I would like us (if not me) to update this topic with the directions/procedures to get this work with Cairo.

I'll also see if TWiki.org will allow me to send a private message or email to JChristophFuchs. (I'm new to the show, so I as of yet do not know.)

-- MattEngland - 10 Apr 2005

I am willing to pay (amount yet to be determined) a developer to make the aforementioned modules integrate to get MediaWiki-like capability if it proves more work then I can handle (either just to install and/or to create any "glueware").

I'm also interested in any "easily revert back to previous revision" capability and I may be interested in paying for that.

-- MattEngland - 10 Apr 2005

Matt, great if you want to pursue this! Are you aware of the topic CodersForHire ? You can (eventually) ask there who wants to help you on these tasks.

-- JosMaccabiani - 10 Apr 2005

Thanks, Jos, I may use this resource if it comes to that.

-- MattEngland - 11 Apr 2005

Just in short: It is possible to glue together HistoryPlugin and CompareRevisionsAddOn, e.g. with the help of templates (we are doing it at our installation).

More details can be found at CombineHistoryPluginWithCompareRevisionsAddOn

-- JChristophFuchs - 12 Apr 2005, 14 Apr 2005

Honestly, I was a little disappointed in TWiki. It was really painful to setup. See my full log: http://geeklog.blogspot.com/2006/10/mysql-error-144-and-apache-performance.html

-- ChangZhao - 28 Oct 2006

TWiki doesn't use MySQL, which you mention in your blog entry as having issues. I think you meant to point to your blog entry on TWiki installation problems.

-- RichardDonkin - 29 Oct 2006