TWiki and Workbook

TWiki and Workbook General usage questions Export/print the TWiki "web" Editor Wrapper/Sidebar page Use of Tools More Detailed technical questions Underlying directory structure Actions resulting from the meeting Exporting documents Pdfplugin Publishaddon Pipe to unix command WYSIWYG editor Editor Side Bar Latex plugin

We need to understand the constraints, which the TWiki environment imposes, to decide which environment to choose for the development of the Workbook (WB). To this end we met with Peter Jones IT/DES and Nils Hoimyr IT/CS (04-02-05). The questions are listed below, followed by the actions resulting from the meeting.

General usage questions

Export/print the TWiki "web"

BaBar maintains the Workbook at SLAC and in parallel keeps a copy at RAL (non-editable).

• We may need similarly a copy of the CERN WB in one of the US labs. Can the WB be exported and which steps are needed for the export.
  • not by default, but there's a plugin which may help: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/PublishAddOn -- EdwardMoyse - 01 Feb 2005
• How can we check that the WB changed in a significant way (meta-tag with date of last significant change?).
• Can we get nice printout?
  • the "print" skin isn't bad, but it would be nice to get proper pdf, as Steve's example showed, with control over font size etc
  • There is a pdfplugin, which is supposed to produce nice pdf output. http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/PdfPlugin
  • (I don't know how current it is though)

Editor

• Replace default TWiki editor
  Can the default editor be replaced (eg by emacs); it is missing features which would be useful
  • enlarge window vertically (can be set in user's main page)
  • highlight
  • spell checker
  • use template when creating new page
  • import an existing file into a Twiki page
    • I found this which might be of interest? There seems to be a spell check plugin as well. The main page for plugins is here -- EdwardMoyse - 01 Feb 2005

Wrapper/Sidebar page

• How much freedom in arranging the wrapper layout
• Can we modify the Twiki sidebar to suit us better?
  • For example, can it include the table of contents of a page, or maybe a mini-site map?
  • Can it be modified per-page/ per wiki topic?

Use of Tools

• Specific actions
  There will be certain "actions", which we want to perform for the WB.
  1. General: Check all pages to perform a certain action
  2. Check validity of URLs
  3. Extract Glossary
  4. TOC of the complete WB
  5. Produce "site map" in a chosen format, e.g. tree or "dense" format, e.g. see sitemap of BaBar WB
  6. Print WB selecting a restricted set of pages
     Not all web pages should be part of the printed version of the book (e.g. choice based on naming convention, depth in dependency tree, meta-tag)

• Search
  We may want to provide a meta-tag for search KEY words.
  • Search the WB for certain KEYs and list the found pages

Are Tools available, which provide these functionalities. Do we have to develop our own tools, and if, would IT have recommendations how to proceed.

More Detailed technical questions

Underlying directory structure

• Is it correct that the file structure within each "web" is completely "flat", i.e. each new TwikiWord in web "Atlas" becomes a new file in this flat structure.
  • It certainly doesn't behave like that (though how it works internally I don't know) - it's possible to change the 'parent' of a topic: for instance I moved one topic from Atlas to Atlas/Tracking -- EdwardMoyse - 01 Feb 2005
• Can we have a dedicated "web" for the "Atlas Workbook"
  • I'm sure this will be fine. It seemed easy enough when I asked Nils to create AtlasComputing (he can answer on friday). But do we gain anything by this? -- EdwardMoyse - 01 Feb 2005
• How is the "web" stored in the CVS repository (as module with files, no further structure?).
• Is the CVS repository accessible and to whom.

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Actions resulting from the meeting

Exporting documents

There are a few Plugins and Addons that need to be tested.

Pdfplugin

This comes with a constraint and relies on the HTMLDOC product which one has to buy. User reviews suggest that it is not that much better then the print skin.

GenPDFAddOn has been tested and seems to work well and has been installed on one of the twiki nodes. Try it by placing the word genpdf instead of view in the URL. Also for now use lxmon01 instead of uimon in the domain name. Examples

ThkTwikiWorkbook

pdfMainWebHome

Publishaddon

This addon has had good reviews, however, it does rely on an extra Perl module that needs to be installed by the root user of the Twiki server. In the URL the user replaces the word view with the word publish. A zip file containing static HTML documents is created in a directory, which has beeen defined by variables in the preferences. The user can then access the zip file from the browser. This would seem to satisfy the requirement. It has been tested and I will ask for the Perl modules to be installed on this TWiki server.

01-Apr-2005 PublishAddOn now works. Type the work publish in place of the word view in the URL. This plugin creates a zip file of all (configurable) Topics in your web, for use for non TWiki purposes. Please send feedback.

Pipe to unix command

There are existing unix commands like html2ps and ps2pdf that can be fed a document via a pipe. Does this satify the requirements? Would this be a solution?

WYSIWYG editor

There is a new addon, KupuEditorAddOn

Kupu is a JavaScript HTML editor compatible with Mozilla & IE.

see http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/KupuEditorAddOn for more details.

To be tested.

Editor

The size of the window for editing can be defined in the user preferences.

Side Bar

Each Web has its own topic called WebLeftBar. For the Atlas web the URL is https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/Atlas/WebLeftBar.

Each user can have his own leftbar, see the following URL for more help http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/WebLeftBarCookbook

Latex plugin

Request for MathModePlugin or LatexToMathMLPlugin in order to display formulas.

MathModePlugin in an older plugin but depends on software that is already available on the webserver. This plugin allows you to include LaTeX formatted math in your TWiki pages.

The plugin has been tested and is now available on our TWiki server.

Here a new delimiter is used to define math strings, the percent sign and the dollar sign (). As with the other markup tokens (asterisk, underscore, equals), you enclose the text to be specially rendered with the token. The closing token must be on the same line as the opening token. This use is identical to that of LaTeX. For example, consider this math string: \int_{-\infty}^\infty e^{-\alpha x^2} dx = \sqrt{\frac{\pi}{\alpha}} When we enclose this string with the math delimiter, we get

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Author: -- TraudlKozanecki - 01 Feb 2005
Contributors: -- EdwardMoyse
Last major update: -- PeterJones - 10 Feb 2005