====== A filemanager? ======


We're considering Dokuwiki to manage our internal documentation. The main roadblock we've found is that managing attached files (documents like PDF, OpenOffice files, etc.) is problematic. Unfortunately, not all documents would be easy to migrate to a wiki format (stuff like PDF forms or spreadsheets). What is mainly lacking is a user-friendly way to add/delete attached files. Something like this:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/documents.php?wg_abbrev=office

It could be a filemanager plugin that could display the files attached to the current page, namespace or whole wiki. Being able to attach metadata (description, author, topic, etc.) to a attachment that could be indexed by the Search tool would be ideal. The current attach window works well for a small number of files, but when you get above, say, 10, it gets hard to manage. Having the option to display or not the thumbnail would be useful in that regard.

What do you guys think? Would this break the wiki philosophy?

> This seems like a great idea to me -- even though I like having the immediacy of the %%{{image.gif}}%% tags placed in a relevant position in the document, it would be a nice to have more full-featured attachment handling. TWiki handles attachments similar to the OASIS Open example you gave.
> But how to handle it? A plugin would be nice (like include %%{{filemanager}}%% on the bottom of a page with lots of attachments) but it seems like it'd have to be built into DokuWiki, since we don't really support associating files with individual pages, and it'd be nice to add the metadata feature request while we're at it... should it include the oft-seen "Attach" button next to the "Edit" button, or should we stick with the current model? Decisions, decisions!!
>> I don't think the current model needs to be changed. %%{{image.gif}}%% tags are just fine. What IMHO needs to be improved is the Add Images dialog to include the features listed above. The metadata dialog could be an icon left of the little trashcan icon. I've created a [[http://bugs.splitbrain.org/?do=details&id=474|ticket]] in the bugtracker for this in where I suggested that the (searchable) metadata could actually be a wikipage with the same name as the attachment, eg, image.gif.txt. The Add Images interface could also be spiffed up a bit to ressemble the OASIS example above (turn thumbnails on/off, date added, user who uploaded the attachment, and, dare I say it, the option to turn on revision history for attachments?)

>>> A solution is to offer users Dokuwiki and a fully-fledged document management system. I can recommend the wonderful 'DocMGR' system. It's better to provide two purpose-built tools than to offer up a half-arsed compromise. --- //[[nick.fahey@iclei.org|Nick Fahey]] 2006-03-05 22:29//

>>>> Adding my nickel... this will require indexing of those documents of course.  I agree with the above statement (or better stated, I need the same thing so I can support uploading documents instead of simply creating pages).  While everything else about this screems it's the right product, this is the one thing lacking for me.  That may mean I'm trying to do everything with one product that really should be done by two.  I certainly haven't asked my car to toast my bread :)

>>>>> I need exactly the same thing. We're choosing the right wiki to create & hold documentation for our Unix sysadmins. I'm willing to re-create some documents in wiki format (especially if they would already need a lot of formatting & editing in the original format) but some documents will be much better attached. I don't want to have two tools - having doc spread thru different tools is the problem we're trying to solve. I like a lot of what I've seen about DW, but so far Twiki is looking like __our__ best choice because of how it handles attachments. (I don't love the Twiki syntax, but there's a plug-in that should give us MediaWiki-like syntax, so that's okay.)  --- //[[jennifer.brooks@virginmobileusa.com|Jennifer Brooks]] 2006-08-22 01:58//

>>>>>> Is this a planned feature?  It's the one thing stopping me from deploying DokuWiki.  We currently hold all our documentation on a UNIX server (updated via Samba) and accessed via crude CGI scripts via Apache.  The Wiki ability would be ideal to ensure people keep information up to date, but we really need it to be //easy// to add attachments to the bottom of a wiki page - without the confusion of uploading it to a namespace (where you can see all unrelated files) and then having to link it separately.  Just click upload, and it uploads the file and adds it to the wiki page much like when sending email attachments.  Document version control would be nice too, but for now just per-page attachments would be enough! --- //SH//

>>>>>>> Me too! dokuwiki looks perfect except for file management covering upload/delete.
>>>>>>> Would be great to have files associated with a page and listed on the right hand side like the table of contents.  
>>>>>>> The sort of thing we would be doing is a page covering a project and a few pdf's and spreadsheets attached with supporting, reference and marketing  information. --- //Walt//