[oslc-core] rich text fields

Arthur Ryman ryman at ca.ibm.com
Mon Apr 5 10:37:07 EDT 2010 

Robert,

Thx. I understand your scenario. We have two alternatives:

1. Use a standard format for rich text, i.e. XHTML. In your use case then 
following conversions happen:
- Mylyn client GETs the change request. The Trac server converts the wiki 
text to XHTML and sends the reponse.
- Mylyn client receives the response and converts it to wiki text, and 
displays it in a wiki text editor
- User edits text and hits "Save button
- Mylyn converts edited wiki text to XHTML and PUTs the modified change 
request to Trac
- Trac receives the XHTML and converts it to native wiki text

The disadvantage of this approach is that Trac and Mylyn must convert 
between their supported text format and XHTML. 
The advantage is that the two tools are loosely coupled. They'll be able 
to collaborate with any tools that support OSLC CM

2. Use the native rich text format of the server
- Mylyn client GETs the change request. The Trac server puts the native 
wiki text in the response.
- Mylyn client receives the response and displays it in a wiki text 
editor. This works because Mylyn supports the native wiki text format used 
by Trac.
- User edits text and hits "Save button
- Mylyn PUTs the modified change request to Trac
- Trac receives the native wiki text

The advantage of this approach is that no conversion or loss of fidelity 
of format occurs.
The disadvantage is that Mylyn needs to support the native text format of 
all servers. This is a burden on the client.


Approach #1 is more aligned with the goal of OSLC of facilitating 
collaboration by defining a standard. The use of XHTML is an aspect of 
defining standard resource formats. By adopting a common format, each 
service and consumer has a bounded amount of work to implement, i.e. the 
conversion to and from its native rich text format.

However, OSLC also let's vendors define extensions, so another approach 
might be to include a copy of the rich text in the native format. Then any 
clients that happened to support that format could edit it directly, i.e. 
without conversion. 

Regards, 
___________________________________________________________________________ 

Arthur Ryman, PhD, DE


Chief Architect, Project and Portfolio Management

IBM Software, Rational

Markham, ON, Canada | Office: 905-413-3077, Cell: 416-939-5063
Twitter | Facebook | YouTube







From:
Robert Elves <robert.elves at tasktop.com>
To:
Arthur Ryman/Toronto/IBM at IBMCA
Cc:
oslc-core at open-services.net, oslc-core-bounces at open-services.net
Date:
03/30/2010 05:16 PM
Subject:
Re: [oslc-core] rich text fields
Sent by:
rob at tasktop.com



Yes, I'm just thinking of the scenario where an existing service, like 
Trac for example that uses a wiki style mark up, gets an OSLC_CM wrapper. 
 Then a rich client (with no delegated web ui but OSLC_CM capability) then 
wants to present and allow editing of an existing record in the native 
(wiki) format.

-Rob

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 4:58 PM, Arthur Ryman <ryman at ca.ibm.com> wrote:
Rob,

Please describe the configuration more. Are you assuming that Trac or Jira
are OSLC CM service providers and that Mylyn is an OSLC CM service
consumer? Is Mylyn creating and updating change requests?

Regards,
___________________________________________________________________________

Arthur Ryman, PhD, DE


Chief Architect, Project and Portfolio Management

IBM Software, Rational

Markham, ON, Canada | Office: 905-413-3077, Cell: 416-939-5063
Twitter | Facebook | YouTube







From:
Robert Elves <robert.elves at tasktop.com>
To:
Arthur Ryman/Toronto/IBM at IBMCA
Cc:
oslc-core at open-services.net, oslc-core-bounces at open-services.net
Date:
03/30/2010 04:28 PM
Subject:
Re: [oslc-core] rich text fields
Sent by:
rob at tasktop.com



Okay, so it sounds like scenarios where a rich client (i.e. Mylyn) intends
to edit wiki markup in a field (i.e. description) and the server usually
serves up wiki (i.e. Trac, Jira, etc), translation to and from xhtml would
need to take place by both parties. In this scenario, would you recommend
simply wrapping and escaping the plain text content within the xhtml body?


Sorry for all the questions Arthur, but just want to make sure I
understand the implications.

-Rob



On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Arthur Ryman <ryman at ca.ibm.com> wrote:
Rob,

OSLC should define some standard properties that can contain rich text. I
assume you are therefore asking what should be done if the existing
service can't handle rich text, i.e. it can only handle plain text.
Fortunately, HTML and XHTML give a simple way to downcast rich text to
plain text, namely just throw away the elements and keep their content.
Browsers do this when they get elements they don't understand. If the
existing service was capable of some amount of rich formatting then it
could map what it could to its native format. However, the native format
would have to be mapped back to XHTML when interchanged.

Regards,
___________________________________________________________________________

Arthur Ryman, PhD, DE


Chief Architect, Project and Portfolio Management

IBM Software, Rational

Markham, ON, Canada | Office: 905-413-3077, Cell: 416-939-5063
Twitter | Facebook | YouTube







From:
Robert Elves <robert.elves at tasktop.com>
To:
Arthur Ryman/Toronto/IBM at IBMCA
Cc:
oslc-core at open-services.net, oslc-core-bounces at open-services.net
Date:
03/30/2010 12:54 PM
Subject:
Re: [oslc-core] rich text fields
Sent by:
rob at tasktop.com



Thanks for your response on this Author.  XHTML does make a lot of sense
in terms of tool support and xml interchange, so I guess my only question
now is what happens in the case where an existing service requires plain
text (i.e. text/plain, so could be text possibly in wiki syntax) to be
posted to it? The OSLC wrapper for such a service I guess would then need
to do its best at converting the posted XHTML to its native syntax?

-Rob

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Arthur Ryman <ryman at ca.ibm.com> wrote:
Robert,

If we support multiple rich text formats then it increases the burden on
all consumers and providers, for example to do full text search, or to
present rich text in web pages, reports and documents.

It simplifies interchange and collaboration if OSLC standardizes on a
single format for rich text. IMHO, XHTML is the best candidate since it is
widely supported, is a W3 standard,  and is XML compliant, which makes it
easy to parse. Most text editors can export and import XHTML.

You mention wiki text, but each wiki has its own special syntax. AFAIK,
there is no standardization or media types for any given wiki dialect.
Wikis convert their markup to HTML anyway for display on the web so it
would seem that any tool that captured rich text on a wiki would have the
capability to convert it to HTML. There are tools for converting HTML to
XHTML, e.g. HTML Tidy. If this conversion is done at interchange time then
it simplifies all other consumers.

Regards,
___________________________________________________________________________

Arthur Ryman, PhD, DE


Chief Architect, Project and Portfolio Management

IBM Software, Rational

Markham, ON, Canada | Office: 905-413-3077, Cell: 416-939-5063
Twitter | Facebook | YouTube







From:
Robert Elves <robert.elves at tasktop.com>
To:
oslc-core at open-services.net
Date:
03/30/2010 10:41 AM
Subject:
[oslc-core] rich text fields
Sent by:
oslc-core-bounces at open-services.net



Hi Group,

I need to raise a concern about strict use of xhtml in the current core
spec.  Although this will work great for those services that use html, I'm
concerned that for many services out there that use another syntax (i.e.
text / wiki), this may unnecessarily complicate both the producers and
consumers. Is it worth exploring inclusion of a media type attribute on
these properties?

Thanks,

-Rob


--
Robert Elves
Tasktop Developer, http://tasktop.com/
Mylyn Committer, http://eclipse.org/mylyn
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--
Robert Elves
Tasktop Developer, http://tasktop.com/
Mylyn Committer, http://eclipse.org/mylyn





--
Robert Elves
Tasktop Developer, http://tasktop.com/
Mylyn Committer, http://eclipse.org/mylyn





-- 
Robert Elves
Tasktop Developer, http://tasktop.com/
Mylyn Committer, http://eclipse.org/mylyn

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