Pier questions

I am considering diving into Pier for some things I am doing, and have some
questions. Pardon me if any of these are very obvious.

- Is internal content (e.g. wiki content) represented in some neutral form,
or in the entry syntax? Would it be easy to enter in wiki-format-A today,
and switch including existing content to wiki-format-B next month?

- Is it simple to connect Pier objects (pages, components on a page, etc.)
to entirely different domain objects (e.g. Customers, Orders, etc.)?

- Does Pier have Ajax capabilities, either built-in, or otherwise available
from squeaksource etc.?
   - in-place editing of stuff?
   - in general, can one use SUComponents easily with Pier?
   - does Ajax live OK alongside Magritte?

- Anyone have a wysiwyg editor hooked up to Pier? There is a Prototype-based
one available here http://inplacericheditor.box.re/demos

- What kinds of CMS-things available in (or for) Pier?
   - Blog
   - Discussion thread / forum
   - what others?

I'm pretty sure most of these can be done, just want to find out what is
already there.

Many thanks,

Sophie



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>  - Is internal content (e.g. wiki content) represented in some neutral form,
>  or in the entry syntax? Would it be easy to enter in wiki-format-A today,
>  and switch including existing content to wiki-format-B next month?

Yes, that would be very easy. The wiki string is parsed and internally
represented only as an abstract representation of the document (AST).
This graph is on the fly transformed to different output formats, such
as XHTML, text, LaTeX or back to the wiki syntax. It would be easy to
write a new transformation emitting your favorite wiki syntax.

>  - Is it simple to connect Pier objects (pages, components on a page, etc.)
>  to entirely different domain objects (e.g. Customers, Orders, etc.)?

Yes, it is possible to integrate other domain objects in Pier.
Existing ones are mostly wrapped into a subclass of PRStructure (i.e.
the publications on http://www.tudorgirba.com/publications), new ones
are directly implemented in a subclass of PRStructure (i.e. the blog
on http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/blog).

>  - Does Pier have Ajax capabilities, either built-in, or otherwise available
>  from squeaksource etc.?

There are some ready made AJAX components, such as the search you see
on some of the above pages. There are many extensions to Magritte and
Pier to make more Ajax like.

Some time ago I proposed as a bachelor project to build a Pier view
solely based on Ajax, however I didn't find a student taking the
challenge.

>    - in-place editing of stuff?

Essentially this is already done. Documents are all edited in-place.
If a page consists of multiple documents these are all active at the
same time. I assume you have some more fine grained editing in mind,
like just editing a single paragraph. There was a proof of concept
implementation years ago, I guess you would have to implement it from
scratch if you really needed that.

>    - in general, can one use SUComponents easily with Pier?

Yes. Basically any Seaside application can be embedded into Pier
without writing a line of code.

>    - does Ajax live OK alongside Magritte?

Magritte-Seaside builds on top of traditional HTTP, so there is
nothing that would prevent it from being used in an AJAX application.
Magritte-Seaside itself does not use AJAX, there are however some
extensions available that make use of AJAX.

>  - Anyone have a wysiwyg editor hooked up to Pier? There is a Prototype-based
>  one available here http://inplacericheditor.box.re/demos

That would be possible, as long it parsed into the internal AST
representation of Pier. I never felt the need to have such an editor,
even though it should be possible.

>  - What kinds of CMS-things available in (or for) Pier?
>    - Blog

Yes.

>    - Discussion thread / forum

As part of the blog. Could be easily extracted to a full forum.

>    - what others?

http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/Archive/Reports/Reng07c.pdf

>  I'm pretty sure most of these can be done, just want to find out what is
>  already there.

Check out http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/smalltalk/pier and there is also
a special mailing list dedicated to Magritte and Pier (and its
predecessor SmallWiki).

Lukas

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http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
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Great!

"Lukas Renggli" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
>>    - in-place editing of stuff?
>
> Essentially this is already done. Documents are all edited in-place.
> If a page consists of multiple documents these are all active at the
> same time. I assume you have some more fine grained editing in mind,
> like just editing a single paragraph.

Not fine-grained editing of a single large text chunk. But if I have a
Customer with personalNotes:Text, profesionalNotes:Text, I would edit the
#personalNotes and #professionalNotes separately. Would I make each of these
a separate "document"?

>>  - Anyone have a wysiwyg editor hooked up to Pier? There is a
>> Prototype-based
>>  one available here http://inplacericheditor.box.re/demos
>
> That would be possible, as long it parsed into the internal AST
> representation of Pier.

So if the editor submits xhtml I would need to add some xhtml->AST smaCC
parser code, and could probably use the existing AST->xhtml for the other
way?

Do you prefer follow-ups go to the pier/smallwiki list? [has much synergy
with seaside, neither seems high volume]

Thanks - Sophie



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> Not fine-grained editing of a single large text chunk. But if I have a
>  Customer with personalNotes:Text, profesionalNotes:Text, I would edit the
>  #personalNotes and #professionalNotes separately. Would I make each of these
>  a separate "document"?

Yes, that would be different documents then.

Exactly. What makes this difficult is that most WYSIWYG editors I know
produce XHTML in a very bad quality. Moreover it is often slightly
different depending on the web browser used.

Personally I found it easier to use a Wiki syntax. I experienced with
several customers that that Wiki syntax can be learned within a few
minutes, even with people that are using Office all day long. So for
me this was never an issue, especially with the editing toolbar that
is available. Of course it would be nice have a WYSIWYG editor as an
option.

>  Do you prefer follow-ups go to the pier/smallwiki list? [has much synergy
>  with seaside, neither seems high volume]

I don't mind using the Seaside mailing-list, however I don't want to
bother people that are not interested in Magritte/Pier (at the moment)
;-)

Lukas

--
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http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
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"Lukas Renggli" <[hidden email]> wrote in message

> Personally I found it easier to use a Wiki syntax.

Does Pier come with one or more of the wiki-link shortcuts (e.g. camelcase
or [[xyz]])?

Thanks - Sophie



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On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 2:46 AM, itsme213 <[hidden email]> wrote:
>  Does Pier come with one or more of the wiki-link shortcuts (e.g. camelcase
>  or [[xyz]])?


Sure. You enclose them in stars, like: *My new page*. Variations on
that are possible, like giving the link another name: *See the help
page>help*. One of the unique features of Pier is that you can embed a
complete Seaside compoinent inside any page, like that: +loginWidget+
. This references a component that you put into Pier and called
loginWidget.

Cheers

Matthias
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