TakeoKatsuki

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Email: <takeo.katsuki AT SPAMFREE gmail DOT com>

Me and MoinMoin

I have been using and running MoinMoin as a small office intranet since Feb 2009, and I think it is absolutely fascinating. Thanks to all the developers and contributors!

Questions/Requests

These are my small questions and requests that might be still too trivial or too preliminary to be put on the FeatureRequests. Any of your help is appreciated!

Current questions/requests

• How can I move "Raw Text" and "Delete Cache" actions from the "more actions" drop-down menu to the edit bar such as next to "attachment"? These two actions are very frequently used, and I need a better access to them.
• It might be useful if a list of attached files is available somewhere in the editing page, because this would allow you copy and paste the file names without going back to the attachment page for copying each file name.

  • Please move that to a FeatureRequests page @SIG

    • Forwarded to FeatureRequests/AttachmentListInEditPage

• Scheduling and logging is very important for project management. Google calendar, for example, works fine as a calendar but its use is limited to scheduling, and cannot be used for logging lots of texts and images. If Moin provides a good scheduling system with its unlimited logging capacity, it would greatly increase the use of Moin for project management. I believe that EventCalendar and MonthCalendar are promising and can be merged in a better way. Forwarded to MacroMarket/EventCalendar.

• A parser for binary dump with coloring.

• As someone has posted on the MonthCalendar page, it would be great if Next Day / Previous Day links are automatically added into the daily pages. I use MonthCalendar as my business calendar and I frequently go back and forth between different daily pages. In such a case, it would be really helpful if one can navigate across pages without having to go back to the calendar page and find the day of interest every time. I think this kind of feature is fairly common in calendar and blog services. Forwarded to FeatureRequests/MonthCalendarNextPreviousDay

  • This probably needs to be done by a macro.

Solved questions/requests

• How can I handle URLs that include | (vertial bar)? Presence of | in an URL conflicts with the [[target|text|params]] syntax.

  • Replace | with %xx (hex expression for |). Example: [[http://google.com/|test|test|test]] and [[http://google.com/%xxtest%xxtest|test]] will be rendered as [[http://google.com/|test|test|test]] and test.

• How do I use a patch? hg import patch?

  • See there: MoinDev/MercurialGuide

    • hg import < patchfile or patch < patchfile (but seems to work only when surrounding regions are somewhat conserved.)

• How do I make unified diff for a code? Mercurial seems to be a way...
  • hg diff, or diff .urN
  • man diff
  • First I have to learn what Mercurial is all about...

    • http://www.lares.dti.ne.jp/~foozy/fujiguruma/scm/mercurial.html (Japanese)

    • http://mono.kmc.gr.jp/~mak/hiki/?Mercurial%A4%CB%A4%C4%A4%A4%A4%C6 (Japanese)

      • hg diff -u original_file modified_file > diff_file

• I like MoinMoin's thorough revision history control. In addition to (or even instead of) the history_count parameter, an interface something like the following may further help navigate through the history without increasing traffic.

  << 0-100 < Show > 200-300 >>
  or
  Show 100- | 200- | 300- | 400- | 500- | >>
  or
  page selection by entering a page number. Forwarded to FeatureRequests/ShowFullRevisionHistory.

  • Nicely achieved in moin1.9.
• Is there any way to search terms in old revisions? I sometimes want to dig old revisions for a piece of information, but checking all revisions manually is not easy.
  • xapian search can be used to search history / old revisions also (try it here)

    • I see. But I think it is not available here (in this wiki), because "Search in all page revisions" in FindPage is inactive. Can it be used if xapian_index_history is True (default: False)?

• Users may be interested in what benefits are expected from those changes planned in MoinMoin2.0. Better performance, security, or interfaces?

  • I guess that is hard to say in a few words.
    • better performance: maybe, but maybe not initially
    • security: yes, some stuff will be solved more consistently and at a single place, not spread all over the code
    • interface: we'll use new theming stuff, so there will be new options for theme designers
    • In general, the main point is having a more solid, more modular, more modern, more powerful, less monolithic, less crappy architecture of the code.

      • Thanks. Sounds great. By the way, is RealTimeEditing (which works like GoogleDoc?) planned to be implemented? I guess such function is not only interesting from users' point of view (as an extreme of GUI Mode) but also from a technical point of view.

• How about making it possible to track revisions for attachments? SVG might be one of the file types that are suitable for this, because it is based on XML. So, this is just an idea, but ReimarBauer/SvgEditor with revision control could be interesting.

  • Hi that will be automaticly working after I have added it to moin-2.0. The two other moin-1.9 drawing programs are already implemented in moin-2.0 with revision tracking. See also the issue tracker of svg-edit too. Some of my wishes implemented makes it also easier for adding it to moin-2.0 and to keep it uptodate. Currently the extension repo has r:1200 for moin-1.9.1 in progress. After the translation issue is fixed I'll update to that revision of svg-edit. -- ReimarBauer 2010-01-20 10:06:33

    • Wow, that's great. I am looking forward to seeing these features. Go, moin, go!
• Is it possible to control access to individual macros? I would like to allow only certain users to use certain macros such as HTMLmacro, which is considered to be unsafe.

  • No. At least not if you mean "insertion of such a macro". You could control execution of a macro by some (acl) check within the macro. -- ThomasWaldmann 2010-01-19 08:12:50

    • Does "execution" mean Save Changes? What I am thinking is to use HTMLmacro in our intranet (visible only for registered users), but would like to unable the macro in the areas where anybody can access. Is there anyway to achieve this other than setting up another wiki? I assume wikifarm is not a solution for this because it share macros.
      • A macro is executed when the page is rendered (shown). Often one does not want to restrict execution of the macro, but insertion of it into the page source (and this isn't easily possible if you just let people edit the page source text).

        • Thanks, Thomas for your responses.

• Why "Save Changes" sometimes delete my homepage?
  • I don't see any deleted version of this page.
    • You are right, but I saw on the "Recent Change" page that this page was deleted, my name turned into gray, and clicking Quick Link to this page gave "page doesn't exist" page. Thus I reverted to the latest version. Strange...
      • Yes, strange. If you find a method to reproduce this, it would be interesting to have a bug report about it.
        • Actually, it was my third time to see this phenomenon happening in the last one year. But I don't know how to reproduce it.

• Is it possible to embed a GoogleCalendar to a wiki page?

  • It is possible if you use MacroMarket/HTML; however, events cannot be created in the wiki page.

• I have a difficulty in generating index for xapian search. I have installed xapian and it seems OK in SystemInfo, but when I run a index command by moin.py it gives errors. What does this mean?

  >python C:/Python26/Lib/site-packages/MoinMoin/script/moin.py --config-dir=C:/Moin/mywiki/ --wiki-url=http://localhost/mywiki index build --mode=add
  
  2009-08-02 13:21:47,019 WARNING MoinMoin.log:139 using logging configuration read from built-in fallback in MoinMoin.log module!
  2009-08-02 13:21:47,464 INFO MoinMoin.config.multiconfig:125 using wiki config:C:\Moin\mywiki\wikiconfig.pyc Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:/Python26/Lib/site-packages/MoinMoin/script/moin.py", line 24, in <mod
  ule> run()
  (several lines not shown)
  File "C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\MoinMoin\support\xapwrap\index.py", line 1
  37, in <module>
  import win32event
  ImportError: No module named win32event

  • I guess you need that: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

    • You are right! Installing pywin32 solved the problem. Xapian is really fast! Thanks.

      • Could anybody add a sentence to mention this requirement for Windows users on HelpOnXapian page? I am not eligible to edit the page.

        • Done on masterwiki page.
• Can target="_blank" option be used for thumbnails? For example,

   [[attachment:image.bmp|{{attachment:image.bmp|alt text|width=200}}]]

  does work, but

   [[attachment:image.bmp|{{attachment:image.bmp|alt text|width=200}}|target="_blank"]]

  doesn't seem to work. I wish it works. This feature has been implemented. See FeatureRequests/ThumbnailTargetBlank.

• Why is wiki syntax not allowed in headings? I am asking this not because I need more prettiness or better navigation, but because it is simply incorrect to use unitalicized letters for name of species or name of genes in the field of biology, for example.
  • 2 reasons:
    • it is a parser limitation, the current parser simply does not do that
    • aside from that, for at least some cases it could be seen as "overload" or "abuse" of headlines if you use lots of markup in them

      • sure, but we also have some title where an part should be "super".
        Example: Art. OR 470 Abs. 2^bis OR
        want a FeatureRequest?

      • Yes, could you please make a request? Or I will do it in a few days. I agree that we don't want to see lots of markups such as smileys in headlines, so how about enabling only simple ones. Will it be technically "overload" to render italics or superscripts? By the way, what does your example above mean?

        • This function is already achieved by FeatureRequests/TitleFormatting.

• Double clicking shortcut to open an edit page is useful. It might be even more useful if the editor shows the clicked region rather than the top of the page. If this is achieved, you don't have to scroll down all the way to find the location you are going to edit. Similar thing can also be achieved by ExtensionProposals/SectionEditing. This was already requested in FeatureRequests/AutoScrollingTheEditorTextArea

  • ExtensionProposal/SectionEditing works fine with 1.8.3. It significantly improves editability for long documents.

• How can I make a page (e.g. RecentChanges) immutable?

  • RecentChanges should usually be immutable. Maybe it is not for you, because you assigned all ACL rights to yourself using acl_rights_before.

• How do I configure the default time zone that is given on the preference page of the users?

  • tz_offset, see HelpOnConfiguration

    • Thank you so much for your help, Thomas. Adding tz_offset = 9.0 to wikiconfig.py worked. But this only works for new users. Wouldn't it be nice if the default setting is "Default", and the "Default" time be specified in the wikiconfig, rather than default setting being UTC? With such system, correcting wikiconfig corrects the default time setting of all users.
• How do I configure the Server time that is given on the preference page?
  • iirc, server time is always shown as UTC
    • OK, so it is not a problem that this server time doesn't match the time of my server computer, is it?
    • It should show the server time as UTC time. If your server's local time is UTC+9, it likely shows localtime minus 9 hours.
    • Yes, it shows localtime minus 9 hours.
• Is there anyway to send a message or an alert to me when a page of my interest on the wiki is updated? Notification? Jabber?

  • see HelpOnNotification

    • HelpOnConfiguration/EmailSupport using Gmail SMTP worked by setting my wikiconfig.py something like in this way: mail_smarthost = "smtp.gmail.com:587" mail_from = u"wikiname <noreply@wikiname.wiki>" mail_login = "gmail.account@gmail.com password". Here a problem is that it takes some time to send a notification through the gmail server, and thus takes more time to complete a Save Changes action. Somehow "smtp.gmail.com:465" didn't work.

• How can I automatically insert a timestamp of the time that I edit a page? I thought that <<DateTime>> macro would do it but it displays the current time not the time of the past...

  • OK, SIG variable does this. Cool. HelpOnVariables

• How can I use Greek alphabets?
  • OK, we can simply copy them from a character code table. 10 µm ± 5 ⇒ λα, etc. Good.
• Is this a bug? Linebreak doesn't work when the first letter of the word prior to a colon is capitalized. Example:

  AB:C<<BR>>aB:C Ab:C<<BR>>ab:C

  Forwarded to MoinMoinBugs/LinebreakFailsAfterColon.

• Some files with Japanese characters in their names cannot be attached.

   UnicodeDecodeError
   'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position 19-21: invalid data

  Once this error appears, the page becomes inaccessible. To rescue the page, the attached file must be manually removed from the attachments folder, and the last line in the edit-log file must also be removed.

  • This is known and there are bug reports for this. It maybe can work if your (file)system encoding is utf-8. Fixing this would need major changes in AttachFile and other parts of moin, so we decided to fix that in moin 2.0 (please use ascii filenames until then).

    • Thanks for your consideration for non-ascii characters. I've read MoinMoinBugs/Non-ASCII attachment names on Windows. It is great to hear that moin 2.0 will support these characters in filenames, but till then is it somehow possible to avoid sticking into an error page? For example, how about checking the filename before processing the attachment action, and if non-ascii characters (or only invalid ascii characters) are found, going back to the uploading page with a warning such as "Use ascii character for filename"? Another simple (but not very effective?) idea may be to display a message that recommends the use of ascii filenames in the upload page itself if user's language setting is non-ascii. I myself never use Japanese characters for any filenames, but I see many others do, and I am afraid that they get puzzled if they find the error and the page being inaccessible. Full support is the best solution, but non-support maybe safer than sticking into a dead end (the error page) that can only be taken care at the server end. Forwarded to MoinMoinBugs/Non-ASCII attachment names on Windows

• How can I make a page (e.g. RecentChanges) immutable?

  • RecentChanges should usually be immutable. Maybe it is not for you, because you assigned all ACL rights to yourself using acl_rights_before.

    • Thanks. Now I think I better understood how ACL works. For an office intranet, wikiconfig.py should look like

         acl_rights_default = u'UserName:read,write,delete,revert All:'
         acl_rights_before = u'AdminName:read,write,delete,revert,admin'

      Acl of individual pages can also be set by adding a line

         #acl SomeUser:read,write

      Great.

Projects/Requests of my interest/favorite

• MoinMoinExtensions/HotKeys

• FeatureRequests/FeatureRequestsIncludeFromTo

• FeatureRequests/MonthCalendarNextPreviousDay

• FeatureRequests/AutoScrollingTheEditorTextArea

• FeatureRequests/AttachmentListInEditPage

• MacroMarket/EventCalendar

• MacroMarket/SeeSaw

My tips

Generating large tables with wiki syntax

Suppose you have a fairly large spread sheet data (e.g. Excel) that you want to transfer to your wiki. Using CSV parser is one of the ways to achieve it without typing lots of ||s; however, all of the useful wiki syntax is ignored in CSV parser. Here is my way to generate large tables with wiki syntax:

1. Insert columns of || using Excel.

2. Replace line breaks with <<BR>>. A line break is Ctrl+J.

3. Save the file in a unicode (.txt) format.
4. Open the file with a text editor and remove "(quotation) by replacing it with nothing.
5. Copy and paste the data to your wiki.

Customizing MonthCalendar color

A bit smaller, less colorful, and better centered calendar achieved by modifying MonthCalendar.py and common.css. MonthCalendar.py.diffcommon.css.diff

Subpages

Memo

http://code.google.com/p/emoji4unicode/

http://drupal.org/

http://www.ganttproject.biz/

http://trac.edgewall.org/

Messages to Me

Please leave messages to me here... Thanks.

Please forward Questions to MoinMoinQuestions. -- ReimarBauer 2009-06-26 21:26:33

Hi

if you look at filesys.fuid there is a max_staleness parameter. read the doc string and change it to your needs. This parameter is used to solve some problems with updates of files on windows.

-- ReimarBauer 2012-08-09 20:52:27

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