I have an abundance of ideas, but only a few of them will be implemented at the start of the beta testing period. The rest will be implemented while beta testing is ongoing, and after the service has been fully launched.
Most of these ideas came from wishes on the feedback site.
As you are watching this wiki, I suspect you have some guesses as to what "Colombo" is and what it can do for your projects. Feel free to share your ideas here.
I'm looking for ideas that you may have considered adding to Wikidot's feedback site, but decided against posting because they were too outlandish or complicated, to ever be accepted by the team.
Yes, I'm serious. Go wild. If you wish Wikidot allowed you to download more RAM or you want your Wikidot site to be an entrant in hit TV show Australia's Got Talent!, say it here!
Or, post something a little more sensible ;-)
I'm imagining that one of the features would be a form of automated integration. Like, the ability to extract data from external sources like a website, excel spreadsheets, databases, etc… and to be able to manipulate them to display in various formats/forms — e.g. data forms
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
Hmm, could you give an example?
But yes, ongoing integration between two separate services (e.g. Google Docs spreadsheets & Wikidot) is definitely a possibility.
When I say "ongoing", I'm contrasting that against a simple migration from one service to another. The two services could be linked, and an edit in one of them could affect the other one.
~ Shane (Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer)
Wikidot: My Blog, Wikidot Editor, Official Docs
Work: ZoomPlanner (built for freelancers/small business)
Other: YouTube (gaming channel)
On several occasions, I've been asked to extract data from an Excel spreadsheet and upload that data to YAML (data form) format. I've actually written a program in PHP that automatically extracts data from Excel files and uploads them in a format determined in a settings file. But a problem with my program was that it could not be used to "ongoing-ly integrate" if pages were "auto-numbered". So, if you don't mind me asking, how do you plan to keep track of new, existing and changed records?
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
What I said above was only a suggestion, based on your comment. I haven't thought past what I wrote up there.
However, I'm sure that the Wikidot page could be linked to the external data source quite easily by storing the required information in the database. When saving a Wikidot page the page name is returned (even if changed as a result of auto-numbering), so that side of things is easy enough. As for the other service … it depends on what functionality that particular API provides.
Most likely something like this won't be available in the beta. For that, I'm aiming at implementing only a few smaller, simpler features that can easily be modified to work differently in an instant, based on user feedback.
Once the beta phase is over, I can set to work on some of the more complex tasks (e.g. what you're describing).
~ Shane (Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer)
Wikidot: My Blog, Wikidot Editor, Official Docs
Work: ZoomPlanner (built for freelancers/small business)
Other: YouTube (gaming channel)
Ah, right. Well, in the interm, I might continue developing my script.
However, I am curious about which language you'll be using to write these "bots". Java or PHP? Your recent post on the dev wiki suggests the latter… or is it neither of them?
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
Actually, it will be a bit of both ;-)
~ Shane (Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer)
Wikidot: My Blog, Wikidot Editor, Official Docs
Work: ZoomPlanner (built for freelancers/small business)
Other: YouTube (gaming channel)