Questions -- MikeSchinkel [2004-07-21]

• In WikiTalkObjectReference what is the exact different between Instance Members and Type Members?
• How to get accecss to a TopicContext object to access CurrentTopic?
• What does TopicInfo.GetListProperty( <TopicName> ) return? It says an Array, but of what?

 @@
 topic.GetListProperty("Test").Collect
        { each | [ each, " | " ] }
 @@

Help!!! How to Test Strings?

I'm trying to figure out how to write a WikiTalk script that will go through all topics that have a property of "Blog:" and if the value starts with "http://" I want to display it. However, I cannot figure out how to get past the substring function. The follow displays ALL blogs properties:

 @@
 namespace.Topics.Select
 {  each | 
    each.HasProperty("Blog") 
 }.Collect
 { e | 
   [ "        * [", e.Name, "] -- ", e.GetProperty("Blog"), Newline ].ToString
 }
 @@

Then this one displays the first seven characters for each blog property.

 @@
 namespace.Topics.Select
 {  each | 
    each.HasProperty("Blog") 
 }.Collect
 { e | 
   [ "        * [", e.Name, "] -- ", e.GetProperty("Blog").Substring(0,7), Newline ].ToString
 }
 @@

But how do I get it to only output the blog when the blog property starts with "http://"?

Thanks in advance. This one is really stumping me.

-- MikeSchinkel [2004-07-17]

How To Change Wiki Borders and Layout?

• I'm getting the impression that you use WikiTalk to change the borders and look of a site. Is that correct? If so, how? I see this example _NormalBordersRightOnly but where would I put that code? -- MikeSchinkel [2004-07-06]
• See WikiCustomizeWebUserInterfaceWithWikiTalk for an explanation. -- WouterCX

Implementation Reviews

Only Right Border

I implemented WikiTalk because I wanted to have only the right border (WikiPane Style). So I downloaded the experimental Update an installed it. It works properly. Anyway, I hacked around in the _NormalBorders for making my wish comes true. Here my Example _NormalBordersRightOnly. To try this out, you just have to make a _NormalBorders - Page for each Namespace, and insert the same content as linked above.

-- SimonSchmid

WikiTalk is great!

At work, we're using FlexWiki to synchronize our group's efforts and improve collaboration. We have a relatively small development group in a non-software manufacturing/engineering environment, and we're tracking bugs, projects and feature requests with it. That allows us to automatically cross-reference design decision discussions with feature requests, bugs with projects, brainstorming with its results, etc (All the benefits of WikiCollaboration). Now, with WikiTalk, I've been able to reduce the amount of redundant information in the Wiki by creating aggregated "views" of data that's been decorated with properties in a much more powerful and quickly customizable way than with the classic behaviors.

People in the group can create their own views of the data using very simple WikiTalk to track the issues they own in whatever way that makes them the most productive. We can also easily cut and paste the aggreagated views into reports to keep management informed.

At home, I'm just doing stuff for fun, but I'd like to unite by blog and wiki universe. The only things missing for that are namespace security and being able to generate my own RSS feeds from aggregated data, which I think WikiTalk could solve as well if you could use it to create RSS feeds. -- MarkMiller

*Can you please provide some examples of cross referencing?!? Thanks in advance. -- MikeSchinkel [2004-07-05]

Yes, I can, MikeSchinkel. See how by just talking about you, I've created a link that people can use to find out more about you? That's what I'm talking about. As long as you have established conventions for naming things, your body of knowledge in the Wiki is automatically cross-referenced. WikiTalk extends the usefulness of this by allowing you to dynamically aggregate data that's been "decorated" with properties. For instance, I can create a list of open bugs that I own with just a few lines of WikiTalk, and it automatically stays in sync with the data stored in the Wiki. It just allows you to actually get at the data that's in there. Now, if we can only get some things like string tests, date and number parsing etc, we'd be set. -- MarkMiller

• Thanks for your reply MarkMiller. However, not that you'd know (unless you noticed how many questions I've asked on this site over the past several weeks), but I'm already pushing FlexWiki pretty hard and by asking my question I was hoping you were talking about some advanced WikiTalk examples. To get an idea of what I've been doing, see: http://www.dotnetinfluencers.org/default.aspx/Wiki.ListOfDotNetBlogs What I need is the equivalent of a "WHERE" clause in a SQL query, i.e. I need an "IsEqual" for strings and "Contains" for properties. -- MikeSchinkel [2004-07-24]

Brainstorming WikiTalk Features

Let's try to riff on how WikiTalk can exploit WikiNature, not just mimic every other language we've ever seen.

These are nice ideas. After some discussion, they should get put on SuggestedEnhancements... -- DavidOrnstein

aTopic.Inlinks is exactly what I need! Also, it would be nice to be able to limit it by properties and/or page names (i.e. aTopic.InLinks("WikiTalk*")) -- MikeSchinkel [2004-07-05]

Traversing aids and algorithms

• aTopic.Outlinks -- finds all the wikilinks on a page
• aTopic.Inlinks -- finds all the pages that cite this topic (could be coded from Outlinks, but should be fast)
• aTopic.Reach(n) -- breadth first traversal of Outlinks to level n
• aTopic.Referers, aNamespace.Referers -- from the logs? or since server boot?

Disecting parts

• aString.Tokens -- with variations breaking on space, comma, embedded-Capital
• aTopic.Sectons -- with variations breaking at headings, horizontal-rules
• this wold return Sections, a subclass of Topic.
• aNamespace.RecentChanges(n) -- for n of number or date

• aDate.Ago -- answers, for example, "2 minutes" or "3 days"
• perhaps Ago answers a TimeSpanType
• heuristic is to answer in largest unit where the measure is >= 2 and the units are therefore plural.

A WikiTalk Function for aDate.Ago

I wrote a couple of WikiTalk functions to give this behavior:

For my uses I only needed second granularity; so a TimeSpanType with 0s and some number of ms gets rounded up to 1s.

-- JimmySieben [2005-08-27]

Unit Testing, Program understanding

• all "Test:" properties must return true to save?
• some sort of speed testing, posibly measured in interpretr "ticks"
• anObject.History -- answers the list of operations that created it.

Caching, Server variables

• computed properties could be cached in the server
• every page save would check the cached object History and dump accordingly.
• writable properties using some awesomly clever serializaton scheme (yaml?)
• or, transiently writable properties that are kept in the server
• how long? one request? one user? one reboot?

FlexWiki already does elaborate caching. See: FlexWikiCaching.

How To

Building tables with WikiTalk

Is there a way to add column headers to a table generated in WikiTalk? Following is the closest that I've come so far:

 ||Repository||Summary||Status||Location||
 @@namespace.Topics.Select
    { e | e.HasProperty("VSSStatus") }.Collect {
      e | ["||[", e.Name, "]||", 
      e.GetProperty("Summary"), "||",
      e.GetProperty("VSSStatus"), "||",
      e.GetProperty("Location"),"||",   Newline].ToOneString }
 @@

The headers are in a table by themselves and the generated table is another table. --DwayneNance

Update

I discovered a solution to the problem.

 @@["||Topic||Summary||", Newline, namespace.Topics.Select
 { e | e.HasProperty("ToDo") }.Collect {
   e | ["||[", e.Name, "]||", e.GetProperty("ToDo"), "||", Newline].ToOneString }
 ].ToOneString
 @@

The above WikiTalk generates the following table. (I'm using the todo property instead of summary so a smaller table will be generated). I noticed that the property name is case sensitive.

--DwayneNance

• This is a very powerful feature - unfortunatly, changing "ToDo" to "Summary" causes the web page not to display (possibly, due to the number of pages it is loading?). --RobinDuerden

Q:[ How do you perform comparisons? I'm trying to create a list of recent changes and I imagine the code would look something like:

 namespace.Topics.Select
 {
    each | each.LastModified > DateTime.Today
 }.Collect
 {
    each | ["        * " , each, Newline,].ToOneString
 }

But the > is causing issues. I've never programmed SmallTalk or WikiTalk to maybe its a mindset... -- JamesSnape [2004-07-25]

]

A: James - I don't think WikiTalk currently can perform comparisions. I don't think it has an expression evaluator. I've been trying to implement comparisons for about 2 weeks, but DavidOrnstein doesn't appear to be around, and I haven't felt like bugging him in email yet. (P.S. Please date your questions and comments to in the future give others a sense of when questions were asked.) Also, is your site public, and if so, what's the URL? -- MikeSchinkel [2004-07-25]