plone notes

RSS

• The RSS feeds for folders also do not appear to indicate when a document is updated. Or else, my RSS reader doesn't consider the entry updated if none of the data in the entry (title, content) has changed (see also next item).
• The RSS feeds for folders include only the Title (and the Description, if set) of each document in the folder, and none of the actual content. I couldn't get any of the modifications that I found on the net to work.
• The Recent Changes page does not have an RSS feed. Boo. Haven't figured this one out yet. A little surprising since it seems like the most obvious feed. Note that on MediaWiki, the "Recent Changes" is (just about) the only RSS feed it provides.

Blogs

• In blogs, the Author and the Timestamp (last modified) are shown only in the individual blog entries, and are not shown in the whole-Blog view. Perhaps this is part of a style definition somewhere.

Misc

• It would appear that the recently modified list includes an entry every time someone logs in. Presumably because the "user" entry has not had its "Login time" and "Last login time" fields update. I don't think this really qualifies as a "change", or at least one that requires an entry in the Recent Changes list. Rather lowers the s/n ratio of the Recent Changes list I think. --This seems to be no longer true after the upgrade to plone 2.5.

• Viewing your user entry, there is an "Edit" tab, which lets you edit the data. However, after editing, there is no corresponding "View" tab -- as there is for most other items you edit. (Ie you can switch back and forth between the "View" tab and the "Edit" tab on most items -- but not for a user entry apparently.)

• The recently modified page displays the owner of each page, not the person who updated each page, which is somewhat confusing. Seeing:

  Modified items

  SAS Documentation by Brandon Rhodes, last updated: 2006-11-13 17:16

makes you think, "Oh, Brandon updated the docs page." whereas in fact, when you look at the page and go to the Versions tab, you see: oh, no, it was Will who last updated that page. That is, the "by" refers to the document title not to the update time..

Comments

• It seems to require a "Subject" when leaving a comment.
• How to include links or other markup in comments? I don't know. HTML doesn't seem to work. reStructured text didn't either.
• Does it notify you about comments left on your items, or replies to your comments? I haven't noticed a way that it does.
• You cannot remove, nor edit, comments you have left. Frustrating. Admins are the only ones that can delete comments.

Wiki

• There's no automatic differences tracking, like I'm used to in MediaWiki. I noticed it said I changed one of my files recently, and I didn't remember what that change was. In mediawiki I would simply have it show me the differences between the current and previous version. It looks like plone doesn't keep track of differences unless you explicitly save a new version. Also .. in brief testing it wouldn't seem to actually show me the differences between versions; it just kept reporting, "No changes".

Document Editing

• I keep forgetting to change my blog entries from "Draft" to "Published" when I create them. And then I wonder why they don't appear on my blog. It takes a two-step process to post a blog entry; see next item.
• You can't edit the text of an item and change the state in the same Submit. It pops up a javascript box that says, "Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page? Your form has not been saved. All changes you have made will be lost." You have to submit the text changes, and then change the state (from Draft to Published or whatnot).
• I want a User preference to set a larger text edit box. In mediawiki I can set the size of my edit box in rows and columns.
• There's no automatic history or undo ability. If you make a mistake, I couldn't find a way to recover previous data or undo or revert changes. It appears you can request to save a new version of a doc, but you have to request this on every save. It will let you rollback to a previous version, but doesn't seem to let you see the source of a previous version (in case you, say, only wanted to revert some changes but not the whole thing). Also the first time you save a "new" version is, in fact, the first version it saves -- so it's not really a "new" version, it's the "first" version. So be sure to save an initial version before making any changes you want recorded in versioning. ...And, no versioning available on blog entries, apparently. :p
• With versioning, I wish I could edit the comment on an existing version.

Kupu

• The kupu editor isn't supported under Safari (doesn't even show up on the page).
• Kupu runs very, very slowly under Camino. In particular, typing text is painfully slow. Under Firefox, this doesn't seem to happen. (And kupu doesn't load at all under Safari.)
• kupu seems to allow only TWO headings levels (which the styles menu calls Heading and Subheading); these seem to correspond to <h2> and <h3>. How to get additional headings levels? h4, h5, etc, etc? I don't know.
• You can select Bold and Iltalics from the kupu bar. How to select <tt> ?
• When creating links to internal (ie plone) docs, kupu gives you a nice popup menu; ie you can select the file without having to remember/type the whole filename or path.
• When moving pages, it seems to update other pages' links to your moved page. Impressive! I haven't tested yet to see if this is specific only to kupu-created links, or whether it's internal-plone logic that might also be true for markup-created links.
• You can gui-drag and resize tables - nice! But it doesn't seem to actually save that new size - huh??
• Also with tables, how to set options like border width??
• How to link to later/earlier sections in the same document??
• After using the popup to add a link to an internal doc, the view is reset to the top of the document edit box. And I have to scroll back down and try to locate where I was editing. Every time. Argh.
• The same reset-to-top behavior when adding or changing style of a table. If the table you happen to be changing doesn't just happen to be at the very top of the document, then you can't see how the change effects the output unless you keep scrolling back down to the table. Every single time. Argh!
• How to tell where a link points?? There should be an option in the right-click menu to "edit link". There's context-specific right-click options for adding/deleting/etc rows in a table; there should be similar context-specific options for viewing and editing link targets.
• When adding a link, the popup appears to list items in the first pane multiple times, ie:
  • Home, Current folder, My recent items, Recent items, Home, Current folder, My recent items, Recent items, Home, Current folder

Markup

• Restructured text won't seem to allow me access to <h1> nor <h2> level headings. The first "section" heading appears to be <h3>, which is .. quite small-size and not very noticeable among the other text.

• Want the ability to set a default "Text Format", per user. I prefer writing in reStructred Text, but have to change the dropdown from HTML every time I create a new page.

• There's no preview when editing docs. You have to actually save, and then see how it looks. If it's not right, you have to re-edit or find a way to undo (which doesn't seem to exist).

• On the wiki, I can write content that links to other content pages that don't yet exist. And when that page loads, you can tell from the link color whether the link leads to content yet or not. This allows me to write content with all the useful links, without that content having to exist first..

  On plone, I can create links to content that doesn't exist yet, but they all appear to be valid links. The user then will click on one, get a 404, click on another, get a 404, and quickly learn to stop clicking on any links.

  Or, on the plone, I can simply not put those links in, until the linked content exists. But then, I have to go back, and add who-knows-how-many links in who-knows-how-many pages.

  Neither of these are satisfying options.

  It seems the wiki is much much better for .. "incomplete" documentation, letting you go ahead and start creating the links and framework and organization, and go back and fill them in when you can; whereas the plone seems to assume .. "finished" documentation. Like most webpages do I guess.

  The wiki just makes it easier to start throwing up documentation as you have it, rather than .. waiting until it's .. "finished".