Simetrical skrev:

Rolf Lampa wrote:

...

Isn't parallel word processing exactly the kind of thing which wikipedia would have use for? Watch the demo video :

http://www.textflow.com

Isn't that how it should be done?

Well, the particular software is closed-source and uses Flash, which is itself closed-source, so it would be unacceptable for Wikipedia use, of course.

I was thinking about the idea, of course. I mean, Ajax is available to all... =)

The video demonstrates a standard conflict-resolution GUI, effectively identical to that used by (for instance) TortoiseSVN, except they have cool but useless visual effects.

I was supposing that the demo was a "rigged fancified" version of the real thing. In any case, having an overview of text contributions and changes in one place, is a benefit compared to separate views, of course.

So no, this is nothing but buzz.

Nice buzz isn't a bad thing, though. Not all buzz is useful, but this one seems to be one. To mee it didn't look like a visual trick which can't be done with a PHP application (MW) with the support of some Ajax magic.

There's nothing of interest to us here, or probably to anyone.

The fact that the basic idea is already known, and used, in other context, doesn't mean that it's useless in another. In any case, this visual trick (or whatever one prefers to call it) will probably appeal to many people doing collaborative text editing.

BTW, isn't most UI stuff "visual tricks" compared to what happens in code under the hood? UI deals with users conceptual level, and his needs and intents, while code is computer technology.

What you actually did in your reply was giving us all a fairly good "translation" of the user concept shown in the video put in "computer technology terms". An almost perfect translation at that. In other words, you translated something which seems to be a little more than only buzz... <ducking>

:)

Regards,

// Rolf Lampa

Simetrical skrev:

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Rolf Lampa rolf.lampa@rilnet.com wrote:

...

The fact that the basic idea is already known, and used, in other context, doesn't mean that it's useless in another. In any case, this visual trick (or whatever one prefers to call it) will probably appeal to many people doing collaborative text editing.

Well, I wasn't entirely awake, I think (nor am I now!).

=.O

This is not really different, UI-wise, from TortoiseSVN's merge thing, as I said; but both are a great improvement over the merge capabilities of MediaWiki itself, of course. The only thing is, edits on wikis tend to be relatively short and immediate, and extensive merging is almost never needed. So trying to get a nifty merging thing (there's no need for AJAX here, when the full text is available on the client side) is probably a waste of effort from MediaWiki's perspective.

Perhaps you're right in the current WP context.

There's a potential though for MW used in other contexts, such as corporate wikis etc where you sometimes need to look very closely at your wording before publishing a text.

Possibly theres a potential in this way of merging text also for WP when doing Q-work on existing articles. Editors could select several old revisions, which in part held good contributions (but were reverted because of the "whole" being not so good) and then the better parts of a partly good (or bad) revision could be merged into a new quality revision. Could be powerful.

O.O ?

:)

// Rolf Lampa