Re: Help Systems in Web Application - Any ideas..

We are using a RESTful configuration on the Dojo client - so if a wiki did
support rest, that would be an added bonus. I'd rather not have to pull in
WordPress/Joomla as we already have a client that handles the content for
the application.

We are using a mixed setup on delivery - so some of the applications are
hosted by our internal servers, while some are installed systems. For our
hosted solution, sharing a single wiki across multiple servers would be an
ideal implementation - so that would be an added plus.

Do you have any recommendations/preferences on Wiki servers - preferably
Java based or something that could either run standalone tomcat or embedded
into an existing application?

I am currently leaning towards JAMWiki as it has a solid license (LGPL) ,
is written in Java w/ a long history and seems like it would integrate well
into an existing application. Anyone have experience/positive/negative
feedback with it?


On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 10:50 PM, Adam Brons <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hey Shane,
>
> To add a little bit on the wiki server.  There are several REST plugins
> you can add to various CMS to allow this to appear seemless.  For instance
> if you were using WordPress or wanted to make that available there's a
> plugin you can add to make available all the content via JSON.  Then the
> client can manage the content via the WYSIWYG in WordPress and you can
> simply write your app to render that content in your app.
>
> Not that you couldn't use the Domino server, or Wiki, but there might be
> other CMS options with better integration support.  Other options I've
> heard mentioned at good alternatives are Druple or Joomala.  I know there's
> also Java-based ones, but not sure of their integration.  In short not
> reinventing the wheel would be my key goal.  You have enough to worry about
> and probably don't need to have a "home-grown cms" added to the list.
>
> -Adam
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 10:34 PM, Shane Pettit <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> My gut reaction was to initially serialize everything to a blob as we do
>> not really have a setup to support media formats.  However, I do like the
>> concept of using a wiki as it would have the ability to handle the WYSIWYG
>> editing out of the box, including support for the various content types.
>> That's essentially what the Domino server is providing, so it would be a
>> very similar implementation.
>>
>> I think with a bit of styling and integration, that would be a great
>> solution giving the most flexibility.
>>
>> Thanks again guys - sometimes I get the four wall syndrome and it's good
>> to have a group to reach out to when you feel like you're headed down the
>> rabbit hole.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 9:16 PM, Marc Mamane <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Shane,
>>>
>>> I'm currently working on a similar project involving web based PDF
>>> generation.  The PDFs are generated from HTML templates.  All templates and
>>> images are stored in the db.  The HTML is saved as text, and the images are
>>> stored separately as blobs.  It's pretty simple to convert the images to
>>> byte arrays and commit them to the db using hibernate.
>>>
>>> Our only real gotcha was handling the image tag SRC attribute.  We ended
>>> up creating an additional rest service which accepts a byte array, commits
>>> it to the db, and returns a token that can be used to retrieve an image
>>> stream via a "getByToken" method.  This allowed us to streamline all of our
>>> image URLs, ie http://service?token=id.
>>>
>>> Our templates are currently created manually.  Now that the templates
>>> can be parsed, saved and successfully reassembled we want to add a
>>> WYSIWYG.  The textAngular project has my eye but we haven't settled on
>>> anything yet.
>>>
>>> I'm also interested in any advice on that front.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Marc
>>>  On Sep 5, 2014 1:17 PM, "Shane Pettit" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Greetings,
>>>>
>>>> I'm reaching out to the members here to see if anyone has worked with a
>>>> requirement where they were asked to produce an in-application help system
>>>> that renders mixed content (Text + Images).
>>>>
>>>> This is the first time I've had this request and was wanting to get
>>>> some ideas / best practices around producing this in an web application
>>>> environment.
>>>>
>>>> Our stack is a common web stack utilizing Spring/Hibernate on the
>>>> backend with a Dojo client on the front end.
>>>>
>>>> The tricky part about this is that they want to be able to produce
>>>> page/context specific help with the ability to do inline updates to the
>>>> help files, linking back to this throughout the application.
>>>>
>>>> In the legacy system, they leveraged some Domino CMS features to
>>>> achieve this.. however, this feels like something a CMS would do well
>>>> versus building an inhouse solution, but I am not aware of any third part
>>>> solutions.  The other aspect is that they have to be i18n compliant and
>>>> will contain images - so storage will be mixed content.
>>>>
>>>> We do not have a media server, nor are they willing to purchase one -
>>>> which makes storing the images a bit tricky as they are pasted inline as
>>>> the content is edited.
>>>>
>>>> Thus, any advice/help in a direction that is both effective and
>>>> implementable by a small team would be great.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> -DaCrazyCoder aka (Shane)
>>>>
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>
>
> --
> Adam Brons
> [email protected]
>
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