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    • My Top 10 TW Peeves

    Posted by Peter posts: 49 Canada

    I don't mean to be a huge whiner (but, trust me.. i am very good at it)... don't get me wrong... TW is amazing.. I got it up and running in < 5 min.. wholly crap.. incredible... and talk about feature packed...

    ....BUT... search DOES NOT WORK properly and the forums are extremely lacking

    wouldn't it make sense to get the basics in place before worrying about things like games, movies, 4 different calendar versions, etc, etc...

    I know.. not too popular to give someone's $0.02 worth... but not sure how else to give feedback on this project... and if you REALLY don't want feedback.. you REALLY are doomed...


    Top 10 TW Peeves:

    1 - why isn’t there a proper SEARCH ?

    - to start this off can we at least agree on a couple things:
    o standard search for - RED BALL would search on RED AND BALL
    o TW does RED OR BALL – which is WRONG!!

    - BASIC search should be capable of:
    o RED BALL = RED AND BALL
    o “red ball??? = only match “red ball??? as quoted
    o and then, maybe RED or BALL = RED OR BALL

    Damian I think replied to my whining about this a year ago and stated some technical reason this couldn’t be done correctly… sorry… that’s ridiculous… anything CAN be done… plus every other site on the planet with a search engine does it right (including simple ones I have written myself) so it can’t really be that hard.

    BUT.. can we at least agree that it is WRONG in current design (1.9)


    2 - what’s up with the FORUM threads?

    - I don’t see THREADs… pretty sure one of most important things about a forum
    - why not tie in phpBB to TW… it works properly (even has proper search engine)
    - I think I read a post a ways back where someone asked this question and they got shot down by someone saying that TW forum was better than phpBB.. OMG.. you really have got to be kidding… they can do a proper search and can display entire thread – nuff said!!

    ok, fine.. I only have these 2 MAJOR pet peeves so far – which after setting up and running a TW site for past 8 months really is saying something about the quality of TW (which is that it is a pretty slick package – in case that was lost in my random sarcasm)

    feel free to ignore me or yell at me all you like,

    cheers,

    peter,
    my tiki site: www.ottawavolleyball.com

    Reads: 2590
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    Posted by Damian Parker posts: 2881 United Kingdom

    If you want phpBB within a Tiki environment, then try http://www.tikipro.org. phpBB is GPL licensed which is incompatible with the TikiWiki LGPL license. So our own forums will be around for awhile, probably in need of a re-write, just like the search.

    1.9 did address limiting search results to onlythings you have permission to access, but this should be properly tested before you use in a live situation where eyes shouldnt read certain things. Personally I wouldnt trust it just yet. (Oh and its mysql specific wink )

    Damian
    http://tikihost.net

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    Posted by Peter posts: 49 Canada

    Hey Damian,

    thanks for pointing out licensing issue (again, i think)... as i mentioned above in reply to Gary... phpBB wasn't exactly my point...

    Also, i took a cursory look at TW-Pro last year and maybe i was missing something, but it seemed EXTREMELY feature-less. I think when i went in to looking at it i expected it was able to pick up ALL the TW modules - but pretty sure that is not the case.

    Perhaps i need to take another look at it.

    AND... still not quite sure from your comments that you get what i mean by the SEARCH here being WRONG - i am not as concerned about security as about LET'S FIRST GET THE BASICs of SEARCH..... AND not OR..

    i guess when i am done finishing adding all my new code to fill in the missing auto email notification stuff.. maybe i will take a look at the search routine to see why all the fuss.... isn't it just an SQL change to make an OR rather than AND??? As i said in my original post :

    do we at least agree default search should be AND not OR??

    peter...

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    Posted by Bernhard posts: 104

    > If you want phpBB within a Tiki environment, then try http://www.tikipro.org. phpBB is GPL licensed which is incompatible with the TikiWiki LGPL license. So our own forums will be around for awhile, probably in need of a re-write, just like the search.
    >
    > 1.9 did address limiting search results to onlythings you have permission to access, but this should be properly tested before you use in a live situation where eyes shouldnt read certain things. Personally I wouldnt trust it just yet. (Oh and its mysql specific wink )

    I'm not a licensing pro, but from my understanding, the GPL forces you to publish modified code when you integrate it, the LGPL doesn't. That's why LGPL code is more often used in commercial projects.

    On the other hand, from what I understood from 1.9, one of the major features was using modules, which means: being able to enable others to adopt their code to seamlessly integrate into the mothership TikiWiki. In this case, ANY code should be acceptable as a plug-in module within TikiWiki, because the TikiWiki act's only as the core, and any other plug-in module is able to provide any code or licensing they want. It's now more about "bundling restrictions".

    That said, the LGPL is a non-issue for modules and if the forum get's implemented as a module, there shouldn't be any problem.

    ... on the other side, as already stated, I might be completely wrong, as I'm not a lawyer or licensing pro.

    Best regards,
    Bernhard

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    Posted by Arnaud HERVE posts: 179 France

    I agree with pl....

    I hope the next 1.10 version will refuse to add new features and concentrate on getting all basic things as finished as the competition.

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    Posted by Peter posts: 49 Canada

    > I agree with pl....
    >
    > I hope the next 1.10 version will refuse to add new features and concentrate on getting all basic things as finished as the competition.

    damn.. someone is agreeing with me??? not sure how i feel about that; pretty rare and sort of cuts in to my whole whining motif... LOL..

    thanks for the support and feedback...

    cheers,
    peter...

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    Posted by Gary Cunningham-Lee posts: 4656 Japan

    The goal with Tiki is to have all the features very integrated, I think, with consistent interfaces, user input syntax, search results, categorization, and so on. This is probably only possible if the features are homegrown, within Tiki, or if somebody adapts something thoroughly, which may be more work that starting from scratch. It is possible to use outside components in a less-integrated way, like Tikipro uses phpbb. But there is a downside to going this route.

    At my family site I use the Gallery photo album scripts inside an iframe in a wiki page for photographs because I already had hundreds of photos on the site in Gallery when I installed Tiki originally, and because Tiki's image gallery is only now approaching the level of Gallery. But users logged into Tiki aren't logged into Gallery (if they have log-in priviledges). Also, searches don't work across both systems, and themes aren't shared. Tiki syntax can't be used in Gallery comments, and so on. Some of these inconsistencies could be fixed if the admin wants to make the effort, but at some point the effort of fixing them becomes great enough, especially when you have not only an image gallery but also forums and other external components that you might want to use with Tiki, that you might as well just use a collection of independent scripts at your site instead of bothering with Tiki at all.

    So you have to decide, as your site admin, if a particular aspect of Tiki is so weak that you want to replace it with an outside component, and are willing to put up with the negatives of using an non-integrated component.

    Keep in mind that Tiki is a volunteer project that advances because people with skills jump in and work on things they are interested in developing. For this reason, some features progress faster than others. Tiki isn't like a company where there is somebody at the top dictating how features are to be worked on. If a user without coding skills wants a feature to progress, he/she has to be patient, persuade or hire somebody skilled to work on it, or learn to write the code themselves.

    I'm sure there's no problem giving feedback, but of course you want to do it in a way that doesn't alienate the people that are key to further progress wink. This is especially true when people are mostly involved for fun, not as a job.

    -- Gary

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    Posted by Peter posts: 49 Canada

    Hey Gary.. very good point about seemless integration - of course this is a very key aspect to any CMS. When i was referring to "integrating" phpBB into TW i meant just that (because of course much easier to say than to code)... integrate it - not just add it as a module which can't be searched, doesn't follow templates, etc.

    And yes, i do realize that is quite a bit of work.

    And, thanks to Damian for pointing out that there is a licensing issue.

    My point wasn't PHPBB.. per say.. it was:

    "FORUM is one of (the few) major modules of a CMS system such as TW - and the one here really needs some work to get up to par with other BB systems around.

    peter....

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    Posted by Peter posts: 49 Canada

    > I like your site.
    >
    >

    well, maybe a little off topic.. but hey... thanks just the same

    a few more custimizations to add some of the missing auto email notify thingies.. and it should be very useful.. as well as pretty.. :-)

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    Posted by Marc Laporte posts: 1633 Canada

    This may help:

    FullTextSearch
    MySQL4SearchHack

    >
    > Top 10 TW Peeves:
    >
    > 1 - why isn’t there a proper SEARCH ?
    >

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    Posted by Peter posts: 49 Canada

    yeaaa baaaby...

    full text search is what i am talkin' about.. so.. why the hell isn't it enabled on this site.. it would actually make it possible to find something!!

    thanks Marc,

    peter...

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    Posted by Marc Laporte posts: 1633 Canada

    > yeaaa baaaby...
    >
    > full text search is what i am talkin' about.. so.. why the hell isn't it enabled on this site.. it would actually make it possible to find something!!
    >
    > thanks Marc,
    >
    > peter...

    Don't thank me yet confused :
    tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=2&postId=256

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    Posted by Peter posts: 49 Canada

    well i didn't just take your word for it.. i did try a setting in on my site and ran a few search tests - it seems to do the right thing.

    it handles what i think are the PRIMARY searches:

    BIG RED
    "BIG RED"
    BIG

    all return different results.

    i just don't get why they don't turn it on for this forum - i dread trying to look something up here .

    cheers,
    peter...

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    Posted by Marc Laporte posts: 1633 Canada

    > well i didn't just take your word for it.. i did try a setting in on my site and ran a few search tests - it seems to do the right thing.
    >

    Great!

    >
    > i just don't get why they don't turn it on for this forum - i dread trying to look something up here .
    >


    Who is "they"?

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    Posted by Peter posts: 49 Canada

    I have the solution to my SEARCH woes.

    With some digging i have realized there is a bug with the FULL TEXT SEARCH routine.

    I posted bug and solution on the official 1.9 bug tracker at:

    http://dev.tikiwiki.org/tiki-view_tracker_item.php?itemId=166&show=view&status=op&trackerId=5&sort_mode=f_41_desc


    hopefully i iwll get a chance to submit my code but figured i should get a consensus before doing so????

    and then.. hopefully tw.org will use the new fix and we can do proper searches in our forum... yeaaaa!!!!

    peter...

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