Discussion:
Integrate archives / logs, permalinks, searching
Julian Foad
2018-12-07 10:50:04 UTC
Permalink
(From my thoughts on svn community development: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SVN/What%27s+In+My+Head#What'sInMyHead-Integratearchives/logs,permalinks,searching )

Problem: Past communications are scattered across systems and storage locations, with no consistent archives or permalinks, so cross-referencing is difficult and non-permanent. Our issue tracker and wiki provide only links that are tied to their current provider technology.

The types of information include:

Short-form chat (IRC) archives: Matrix-Static, irclogger, ASF Wilderness IRC logs.
Email/forum archives: haxx.se, ASF Pony Mail, the old Tigris lists. (The old Tigris mailing-lists system used to provide a permalink to the archived version at the bottom of each mail delivered.)
Issue Tracker: the current Jira issues, the old issuezilla.
Wiki pages: the current Confluence, the old MoinMoin.

An important step is to develop a URL "permalink" scheme to refer to our various resources. These would be technology-ignorant URLs, all under subversion.apache.org, like "/issue/1234".

A baby step is the '.message-ids.tsv' file in our web site directory, holding a mapping from haxx archive URLs used in our web pages to email message ids, with (in the commit log message) a script to generate it. There is, as yet, no automation to use the mapping in any way.

Initial tasks:

start documenting a URL-space map for our resources
populate one entry, e.g. "/issue/<number> → issue <number>"
implement some simple automated handling (e.g. redirects) for that
well, well... we already have this in our .htaccess which covers that exact case along with some aliases:
"RedirectMatch ^/issue[^A-Za-z0-9]?(\d+)$ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SVN-$1"
start using it: update existing direct links to point here instead; publicize it

Deeper integration: A permalink URL should not merely redirect the user to its technology-specific target URL, but present the target in such a way that other inbound and outbound URLs also use the permalink form. With a big third-party system like Jira or Confluence the feasibility of that is going to depend entirely on whether the system has built-in support for that usage.
--
- Julian
Branko Čibej
2018-12-07 11:02:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Julian Foad
(From my thoughts on svn community development: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SVN/What%27s+In+My+Head#What'sInMyHead-Integratearchives/logs,permalinks,searching )
The way to start would be to post permalinks to Confluence pages. I can
break that link right now by renaming your head ... I mean the page
about what's in it. :)

-- Brane
Julian Foad
2018-12-07 11:14:22 UTC
Permalink
Post by Branko Čibej
Post by Julian Foad
(From my thoughts on svn community development: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SVN/What%27s+In+My+Head#What'sInMyHead-Integratearchives/logs,permalinks,searching )
The way to start would be to post permalinks to Confluence pages. I can
break that link right now by renaming your head ... I mean the page
about what's in it. :)
Yes, yes. But it's less functional: Confluence doesn't seem to provide a permalink for a subsection. Here's one for the whole page:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/x/U4rQBQ

And here's a start on a URL resource map:

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/x/-4vQBQ "Project Resource URLs"
--
- Julian
Daniel Shahaf
2018-12-07 11:28:43 UTC
Permalink
Post by Julian Foad
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/x/U4rQBQ
Will this link be valid in a year or three when the cwiki installation
has been migrated to another host? Or will it be invalidated upon the
next server reboot, or in 90 days, or something like that?

Is there a permalink format that includes the title of the linked page?
A link that includes only a database identifier is poor from a usability
point of view.
Johan Corveleyn
2018-12-07 11:49:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Daniel Shahaf
Post by Julian Foad
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/x/U4rQBQ
Will this link be valid in a year or three when the cwiki installation
has been migrated to another host? Or will it be invalidated upon the
next server reboot, or in 90 days, or something like that?
Is there a permalink format that includes the title of the linked page?
A link that includes only a database identifier is poor from a usability
point of view.
Just as a data point for the discussion: using links with page names,
where the page has been renamed, are handled quite gracefully by
Confluence. No automatic redirect, but a "Page not found" with "The
page you were looking for may have been renamed to the following:
<link to new page>".

See for example:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SVN/FrontPage

Of course, in that case you also lose any "fragment" part (#section1)
of the incoming link.
--
Johan
Branko Čibej
2018-12-07 12:42:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by Julian Foad
Post by Branko Čibej
Post by Julian Foad
(From my thoughts on svn community development: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SVN/What%27s+In+My+Head#What'sInMyHead-Integratearchives/logs,permalinks,searching )
The way to start would be to post permalinks to Confluence pages. I can
break that link right now by renaming your head ... I mean the page
about what's in it. :)
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/x/U4rQBQ
Paste the anchor onto that and it "just works":

https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/x/U4rQBQ#What'sInMyHead-Integratearchives/logs,permalinks,searching

Of course that's a completely moronic way to identify resource
fragments. Clearly the low-budget developers who invented this scheme
for Atlassian don't have a clue about usability in hypertext.

-- Brane

P.S.: Is there a plain-text editor for Confluence with visible markup?
The WYSIWYMPGIYVL one is less than perfect.

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