Collaborative work using JigEdit

At the beginning, editing a web site was easy, a couple of pages, then some more pages, handled by a small number of people. But now, with more and more people working on the same sets of pages, the need of coherent collaborative edition becomes crucial.

The first step was to use CVS to store version information on all the files stored in the website. It helped people to work on the same set of files but... All the users needed to know the underlying tool, CVS. The goal of JigEdit was to hide as much as possible CVS for the users so that it can be use by a larger number of people. The current version is based on the 2.0 version of Jigsaw and require some work to setup, and less work to administrate. It uses pre-"templates" to create accounts.

Setup and Administration of JigEdit

There are many ways to setup Jigsaw, the "basic" mode is to index all the resources needed. It is ok for very small configuration, but not for larger server. The other way is to use indexers that are in charge of creating all the resources with the right setup. The setup of JigEdit require a quite complex way of setting the indexers, it is what we will present now:

There are three indexers:

1. the Account indexer, in charge of creating the PutList and the main WWW directory.
2. the Icon indexer, in charge of creating the Icons directory for each account.
3. the Main indexer, used to index all files as putable or autocommited.

The format of a directory is:

The first indexer is attached to the account name, in the previous image: yves-ac (means yves's account, autocommited version). This indexers create the PutList and WWW, it also attached a GrepPutFilter to WWW.

 The second indexer is attached to the WWW directory, and is attached automatically to this resource by the first indexer. The Icons resource is created, it is just a simple empty FramedResource with a RelocateFrame to the main /Icons directory. The purpose of that is to reduce the number of used resource inside the server.

Creation of the main Icon directory

The first step of the installation is to create the /Icons directory:

1. Click on the "space" node of the http-server. The Resources helper appears.
2. Add a org.w3c.jigsaw.resources.PassDirectory with "Icons" as the identifier.
3. Click on the new Icons node created
4. Click on the Frames helper and add an org.w3c.jigsaw.frames.HTTPFrame
5. Now click on the small Icons white directory below the helper, it should have a son node called "HTTPFrame (frame-0)". Click on this node and edit the attributes of this frame (Add dir.gif as the icon).
6. Click on "Attributes" to raise the Attribute helper of the Icons resource.
7. Set the indexer to "icons" to index the subdirectories of "Icons", set it to be extensible and negotiable, set the pass-target to be /afs/w3.org/pub/WWW/Icons. Rember that each change should be commited to be taken into account by the server!
8. Index the directory by pointing to this new directory using a browser of by clicking on "reindex children" in JigAdmin (it will index... everything below this resource, so use this carefully).

The second step is to create the three indexers. Note that some things won't be created automatically and will need some little editing after the creation of a JigEdit account... Note that you can do two version of the indexers, one for a simple account with PUT capabilities and with the separate CVS interface, and another one with the autocommit feature (automatic cvs commit on PUT) and the possibility of autolookup (automatic cvs update on a GET to be sure to work on the latest version). Of course, all the problem that may arise using the second method can be solved easily using the CVS form.

Creation of the main indexer

This indexer will create all the resources needed for usual work, putable resource or CVS resources. The main indexer should looks like this:

Of course the possible putable extension can be modified, you can also add gif, png, jpg, txt.... Two kinds of indexers will be presented now, the "normal" Main indexer and the autocommit/autolookup version. The steps 6, 8 and 9 may change, see the second list below.

1. Click on the indexers node of the jigedit server
2. add the CVS-Main (or AC-Main for autocommit) indexer (org.w3c.jigsaw.indexer.ContentTypeIndexer)
3. Click on the new CVS-Main (AC-Main) node to edit the attributes... Good there is no attribute to modify!
4. Add in the directories CVS, an org.w3c.tools.resources.FramedResource. This is an empty resource, as all the work will be done by the ProtocolFrame.
5. Add the protocol frame to this new resource, the class of this frame is org.w3c.jigedit.cvs.CvsFrame. Now edit the attributes of this frame, set the icon to movie.gif and enable "convert-get" if not set.
6. Add the "*default*" resource, this resource will match all directories not matching CVS. The class of that resource is org.jigsaw.resources.DirectoryResource
7. Add the protocol frame, a normal org.w3c.jigsaw.frames.HTTPFrame, edit the attributes of this protocol frame to set the putable flag to "true" (and modify the icon to "dir.gif").
8. Now add some extensions. As the super indexer of this indexer is "default" you only have to add the extensions you want to be able to edit using JigEdit using the PUT method. In the example, we have "css" (mime type "text/css"), htm (mime type "text/html"), html (mime type "text/html"), src (mime type "text/html"). Be sure to set the putable flag to "true" in the HTTPFrame!
9. Now add some new content types to this indexer, like text:* (text/*) or some others, using the same setup as above.

Now, the modification in this process for the AC indexer. First, the name should be AC-Main rather than CVS-Main, to avoid problems if the two kind of indexers have to coexist.

• Step 6: The class of the "*default*" resource should be org.w3c.jigedit.resources.AutoLookupDirectory instead of org.w3c.jigsaw.resources.DirectoryResource, Why not having a specific frame? Simply because the cvs stuff is done in the lookup stage, and is not protocol-dependent. To allow the autoupdate (slower) set the autoupdate attribute to "true".
• Step 8: The class of the resources is still an org.w3c.jigsaw.resources.FileResource, but the frame is no longer an HTTPFrame, but an org.w3c.jigedit.frames.CvsFileFrame, why a frame and not another resource? Because the CVS action are done doing the PUT, so it is linked to the protocol.
• Step 9" See Step 8 modification for the frame class.

Creation of the Icon indexer

This indexer has to create the "Icons" directory and create all other resources like the main indexer and set the indexer on those resources to "CVS-Main" (resp. AC-Main).

Of course two version can be done, a "normal" one, and the autocommit/autolookup version.

1. add the CVS-Icon (or AC-Icon for autocommit) indexer (org.w3c.tools.resources.indexer.SampleResourceIndexer)
2. Click on the new CVS-Icon (AC-Icon) node to edit the attributes, and change the super-indexer to CVS-Main (resp. AC-Main).
3. do the step 4,5,6 and 7 as for the creation of the main indexer, with a little modification, you have to edit the attributes of the "*default* resource and set the indexer to "CVS-Main" (resp. AC-Main), so that all the resource created will have their sons indexed with the right indexer.
4. Still in "directories", you now have to add the "Icons" node. To save resources, it is better to do a redirect rather than reindexing all the icons for everyone. Create a org.w3c.tools.resources.FramedResource and add an org.w3c.jigsaw.frames.RelocateFrame to it. Edit the attributes of this frame:
   1. Change the title to "shadow icon directory"
   2. the icon to "dir.gif"
   3. the location to "/Icons/" (the '/' at the end is important)
   4. set handle-pathinfo to true
5. Commit everything, as usual.

For the autocommit/autolookup version, nothing changes as the important stuff is handled by the main indexer.

Creation of the account indexer

This indexer is in charge of setting the Putlist and some filters. It is a very simple one, but some work has to be done on resources created with this indexer, as it is not a real template (altough a small PERL script can be made to do an automatic modification after the creation of the main resources).

The two version of the indexer will be the same, expect, of course, the name, the super-indexers used, like above and the class of the edit root directory (WWW).

1. add the CVS-Account (or AC-Account for autocommit) indexer (org.w3c.tools.resources.indexer.SampleResourceIndexer). There are no changes in the attributes as we do not want to index resources using CVS now (we are not in the WWW directory yet).
2. In the directories, add the PutList, the class of the PutList is org.w3c.jigedit.filters.PutListResource. Note that the associated frame (PutListFrame) is automatically added. This behaviour is normal as this resource will work more or less only with HTTP. If ever some other protocols are allowed to upload resources, it may change and you will have then to add this frame by hand (org.w3c.jigedit.filters.PutListFrame).
3. Edit the attributes of the PutListFrame, set the icon to burst.gif, convert-get to "true" and commit.
4. Edit the attributes of the PutListResource, you will have to modify the attributes after the creation of the PutList:
   1. "file" holds the references to the modified files, the safest way is to create a "putlist" directory in the config directory of your server, and set this attribute to "/<server-dir>/config/putlist/account.db" (at INRIA: "/u/tarantula/0/w3c/ylafon/Servers/JigEdit/config/putlist/account.db"). You will have to change "account" to the account name, "yves-ac" for example.
   2. "space" is  the physical directory that hold the local copy of the CVS space, for example "/home/jigedit/account/"
   3. "root" is the physical directory of the AFS space, it is "/afs/w3.org/pub" and you will not have to change it!
5. Create the WWW directory, the class is org.w3c.jigsaw.resources.DirectoryResource. Add the org.w3c.jigsaw.frames.HTTPframe to it. Edit the attributes to set a fancy title, a fancy icon and to set the putable flag to "true". Change its indexer to Icon(CVS-Icon or AC-Icon)
6. Add a filter to that HTTPFrame, the filter is the GrepPutFilter (org.w3c.jigedit.filters.GrepPutFilter). Change the attributes:
   1. the put-list attributes gives the URL of the PutList, as this filter feeds the PutList. set it to "/account/PutList". Once the account has been created, for user "foo", you will have to modify this attribute value to "/foo/Putlist" (relative URL ../Putlist is not valid in that case).
   2. Change the forbidden string to the hostname of your jigedit server. "myserver.w3.org:8080" for "myserver" jigedit server on port 8080. It will prevent people to put links to jigedit hidden by some obscure HTML composers ;)
   3. The redirect-url field can point to an explanation page, if blank the error message "Forbidden" will appear.

Everything is ok, now you only have to add new users, set one filter and modify some attributes and everything will be up and running!

Add an user to jigedit

This is very simple now, Add a directory or a PassDirectory (depending if you want all the files on the same filesystem or not), set the indexer to be CVS-Account (or AC-Account if you want autocommit/lookup feature enabled), then add an HTTPFrame and add to this frame an authFilter (org.w3c.jigsaw.auth.GenericAuthFilter). The name of the user accessing this space will be used during the publish to set the author name, like at the end of this page ('yves'). Now go to the PutList using a browser, to force the indexation of this resource, then go back to the configuration tool to modify all the attributes that needs modification as mentionned above.

Enhancements to JigEdit

You can also setup cool things to enhance JigEdit. One thing is the ToolsLister. This resource is a normal directory lister plus some tools, like deletion of a local file and its associated resource (it is important that you avoid deleting files directly!). To do so,

Open the main indexer, go to directories and add a "lister" resource of class org.w3c.jigedit.tools.ToolsLister. This resource will create its own frame directly. Open the lister frame, the resource in the little frame browser, and edit the frame attributes, set the icon to "burst.gif" and the title to "Don't delete this resource and the CVS directory!" to avoid fatal mistakes by the users :) You can also setup the "style-sheet-link" attribute to the URL of a style sheet for the lister layout. One style I like:

BODY {
  color: black;
  background: white;
  font-family: serif;
}
H1 {
  color: white;
  background: teal;
  font-weight: bold;
  font-size: large;
  font-family: helvetica, sans-serif;
  margin-top: 3%
  padding: 1%;
  border: none;
  width: 100%;
}
A {
  text-decoration: none;
  color: teal;
  font-weight: bold;
}

Now go to the "*default" directory, edit the attributes of the Protocol Frame, and set the index to "lister". The resource served when "/foo/" is requested will be "/foo/lister". Save everything...

You are all set now, happy editing!