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    • Subcategories? (mainly file gallery)

    Posted by tckepley posts: 5 ☆ ☆

    I am currently preparing to launch a site based on TikiWiki. I could really benefit from having subcategories in the file gallery.


    This is for a site that is based around providing assistance to University of North Carolina at Greensboro students. I'd like to have a nested style deal where you could go something like "Syllabi>English>204>Syllabus1.doc" or something of that natureif that makes sense.


    I wouldn't mind attempting to hack it if someone could give me a starting point. :-)

    Reads: 1337
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    Posted by George Greene posts: 255 ☆ ☆ ☆ United States

    While we are at it it would be nice to know how to do it in the Image Gallery.

    I've created a new gallery and chosen another gallery as the "parent" gallery but it all still displays as a flat list.

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    Posted by tckepley posts: 5 ☆ ☆
    certainly. that was going to be my next question. file galleries are most important to me, but i would love to have this feature in the photo galleries section as well.
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    Posted by Rick Sapir / Tiki for Smarties posts: 3622 ☆ ☆ ☆ United States

    > I am currently preparing to launch a site based on TikiWiki. I could really benefit from having subcategories in the file gallery.
    >
    >
    > This is for a site that is based around providing assistance to University of North Carolina at Greensboro students. I'd like to have a nested style deal where you could go something like "Syllabi>English>204>Syllabus1.doc" or something of that natureif that makes sense.
    >
    >
    > I wouldn't mind attempting to hack it if someone could give me a starting point. :-)

    Personally, I'd use wiki pages + categories to do this — I wouldn't mess with adding .DOC files at all. Just use the wiki, that's what its there for.

    Tiki's category feature has complete support for subcategories.

    HTH,



    -Rick
    -My Tiki Blog: Help, Hints, and Hacks

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    Posted by tckepley posts: 5 ☆ ☆

    > Personally, I'd use wiki pages + categories to do this — I wouldn't mess with adding .DOC files at all. Just use the wiki, that's what its there for.
    >
    > Tiki's category feature has complete support for subcategories.


    Well, the problem is that the files professors distribute are generally in powerpoint, word or PDF format. It would be a pain for users to transpose the files to tikiwiki format.

    The idea of the site is to have a Wiki that tell what classes professors offer, what the professors are like, their contact info and then have galleries featuring files for each of the professors (be it old tests, notes, study guides etc...)


    Now if you're saying to simply use the wiki pages as file galleries, that may work. Just attaching files to individual pages. That's certainly an idea, but would require heavy moderating to ensure a good uniformity.

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    Posted by Abraham posts: 1 ☆

    In response to Rick,
    Subcategories for file galleries are still a necessity. Though I agree all .docs should be converted to wikis, I have pdfs of scanned receipts that I use to track and keep a permanent record of expenses. In this use and in other areas, I would benefit from being able to organize my files into galleries and sub galleries within a category. Outline type organization in file galleries is a necessity.

    -Abraham

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    Posted by al123 posts: 32 ☆ ☆ ☆

    quote
    This is for a site that is based around providing assistance to University of North Carolina at Greensboro students. I'd like to have a nested style deal where you could go something like "Syllabi>English>204>Syllabus1.doc" or something of that natureif that makes sense. I wouldn't mind attempting to hack it if someone could give me a starting point. :-)
    /quote


    Hi

    A starting point could be the source for ))LauLima(( - a highly modified version of TW developed as part of an education research project. It's source is available here and it's also available as a vmware virtual machine.
    It features heirarchical file galleries, and an extended permissions system allowing full control in a very granular manner over who can access which file or file gallery.

    A screenshot, that shows it, together with one of the later additions that I've made - drag and drop upload directly to both file galleries, and to wiki pages. In the case of wiki pages, files, and folders of files can be uploaded to wiki pages, images will be rescaled, permissions will be set for each uploaded file, and also the correct wiki syntax will be inserted into the page - all automatically. The drag and drop uses a commercial (though reasonably priced) java applet so that cannot be redistributed. The source for it's use hasn't been made public yet - timescale for that as yet unknown.

    Another later addition - source not yet distributed - is an LFG plugin. This lists the contents of a file gallerys (customiseable columns and sort order) in a wiki page, and also allows direct uploading to a specific file gallery from that wiki page.


    Hope that's of interest.

    Andrew

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    Posted by tckepley posts: 5 ☆ ☆

    I have downloaded LauLima, but I have a question--you say it uses a commercial java applet. As I am not affiliated with the University other than being an alumni, I really don't want to shell out cash that I don't have. Will the software run without that applet?

    thanks and if there is more info, or a site that demonstrates it, please send it my way!

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    Posted by al123 posts: 32 ☆ ☆ ☆

    > I have downloaded LauLima, but I have a question--you say it uses a commercial java applet. As I am not affiliated with the University other than being an alumni, I really don't want to shell out cash that I don't have. Will the software run without that applet?
    >
    > thanks and if there is more info, or a site that demonstrates it, please send it my way!


    Sorry for any confusion. The drag and drop code has not been released yet. The version for download features the hierarchical file galleries, but not the drag and drop.

    The file gallery code in the release is functional but not optimised, it has been much improved in later unreleased versions, and is scheduled for a rewrite, possibly this summer when I plan to ajaxify the file gallery area if I have time.

    The easiest way to get it all running is to download the vmware virtual machine from the same site, it's a hefty download, but should get you a running virtual machine for you to play on and see if it does what you want with minimal setup or fuss - the only thing is the menus will be text only in that version, but it will allow you to trial functionality.

    You could study the code can copy the various scripts/libraries back into your TW - this should be relatively straightforward, though you will likely have to tweak some of my scripts as the permissions functions are different, and used different database tables etc.

    Andrew

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    Posted by Koichi posts: 4 ☆ Russia
    Has anyone ported LauLima code to TikiWiki?
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    Posted by Xavier de Pedro posts: 1811 ☆ ☆ ☆ Catalan Countries

    Hi tckepley, and welcome to Tikiwiki Community :-)

    Interesting thread... A shame that full LauLima code is not free software.... (the same on a nice menu engine I saw, but closed source again... :-( )

    If you want to keep track on free software tools integrated within Tiki, you have to check the Workspaces feature that come along in Mod Aulawiki: they were coded from scratch for Tikiwiki..., and are being used for production on some research projects at University of Barcelona (Spain; closed environment to keep privacy of our students), as well as on a non-profit cooperative offering courses on free software in Barcelona... (http://moviments.net/cursos)

    You can test aulawiki and workspaces on http://edu.tikiwiki.org

    HTH

    xavi

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    Posted by al123 posts: 32 ☆ ☆ ☆

    > Interesting thread... A shame that full LauLima code is not free software.... (the same on a nice menu engine I saw, but closed source again... :-( )


    Hi Xavi

    I know exactly where you're coming from, but there were a number of factors that caused us to choose the developmental path that we've followed.

    Re menus - yes it's closed source, but we chose this system due to its very good accessiblility - it's free as in 'beer' to educational and non-commercial sites - see authors licensing for details. The alternative is to revert to the inbuilt TW menus, which would function though need a little updating - or use the menus in TW that were not present at the time of the LL addition.

    D&D closed source and commercial (though reasonably priced) - though if you can find me something open source that will allow me to do what I do with the commercial applet, then I would be willing to look at making an open source version - though we will probably release the LL code that interacts with the commercial product anyway.

    LL source is open except for the two optional components above - and we make our latest additions available periodically, generally after a series of related improvements.

    Finally, back on topic

    If anyone plans to add subfolders to either the fg or ig, then the approach we chose was to add an extra field in the database (parent) in which we stored the filegalleryId of the parent folder - with the use of a recursive function it's therefore possible to build a tree structure - so we did it in metadata, rather than on the host file system. The distributed version is functional but non-optimised - it's been further tweaked and is a lot better (not yet released), but if I get a chance this summer I plan to completely rewrite the file gallery component to incorporate lots of ajax functionality and to further improve performance.

    Regards

    Andrew

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    Posted by Xavier de Pedro posts: 1811 ☆ ☆ ☆ Catalan Countries

    I understand you, Andrew.
    Good luck to all Free software products, and lets hope forks find ways to join efforts back somehow with the main branch... (same as with bitweaver, etc.). We need mutual feedback and take profit of improvements made on both projects...
    Cheers,
    Xavi

    P.S: I personally liked a lot your work on LauLima when I saw it. (a shame it was a fork). But I repeat that I understand the decision you had to take by then, your situation of that project in UK, etc.


    > > Interesting thread... A shame that full LauLima code is not free software.... (the same on a nice menu engine I saw, but closed source again... :-( )
    >
    >
    > Hi Xavi
    >
    > I know exactly where you're coming from, but there were a number of factors that caused us to choose the developmental path that we've followed.
    >
    > Re menus - yes it's closed source, but we chose this system due to its very good accessiblility - it's free as in 'beer' to educational and non-commercial sites - see authors licensing for details. The alternative is to revert to the inbuilt TW menus, which would function though need a little updating - or use the menus in TW that were not present at the time of the LL addition.
    >
    > D&D closed source and commercial (though reasonably priced) - though if you can find me something open source that will allow me to do what I do with the commercial applet, then I would be willing to look at making an open source version - though we will probably release the LL code that interacts with the commercial product anyway.
    >
    > LL source is open except for the two optional components above - and we make our latest additions available periodically, generally after a series of related improvements.
    >
    > Finally, back on topic
    >
    > If anyone plans to add subfolders to either the fg or ig, then the approach we chose was to add an extra field in the database (parent) in which we stored the filegalleryId of the parent folder - with the use of a recursive function it's therefore possible to build a tree structure - so we did it in metadata, rather than on the host file system. The distributed version is functional but non-optimised - it's been further tweaked and is a lot better (not yet released), but if I get a chance this summer I plan to completely rewrite the file gallery component to incorporate lots of ajax functionality and to further improve performance.
    >
    > Regards
    >
    > Andrew

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    Posted by al123 posts: 32 ☆ ☆ ☆

    Hi again Xavi

    I try not to think of it as a fork, as there's only me developing it. I think of it as a highly customised version that has been tweaked to meet the in-house needs of our project.

    If I had time I would add the changes to your cvs, but they are extensive, and although they meet some of the needs that I've seen requested, by their very nature they would prevent some of the functionality that's needed by other users.

    Andrew

    (I'll drop you a pm)

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