Ingo Rau

Hi! As a member of the DeepaMehtaTeam I currently focus on testing new DeepaMehta features from an end user perspective. I try to give feedback on how to make DeepaMehta increasingly user friendly. I am also working on how DeepaMehta is featured, explained, talked about ... on a number of websites. We hope to structure some of the information online to make starting with DeepaMehta (in whatever context) as easy as possible. We also started to collect UserStories and want to show how they can be implemented with DeepaMehta. If you have used DeepaMehta already we would love to hear from you. What did you use it for? What worked for you? What caused problems? How would you like it to be improved?

Contact me on:

• ingo(dot)rau(at)econauten(dot)de
• or have a look at my ​profile on econauten.de (currently only in german)

Exploring Trac Features

• WikiMacros
• CamelCase
• WikiPageNames
• WikiFormatting
• WikiNewPage
• ​http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TagsPlugin
• TracPlugins

Testing Snapshot Releases

4.0.4-20110912

Features that should work:

assign user icons to types (#49).

Assign an icon to a topic type (and thus to all of its instances): 1) Reveal the type 2) Navigate to its "View Configuration" topic. You see the currently assigned icon at the top of the content panel. 3) Press "Edit". You enter the view config's form. At the top you see the current icon. 4) Press the "Choose" button besides the icon. You see the iconpicker dialog with a variety of icons. 5) Pick one icon by clicking it. The iconpicker dialog closes. The picked icon appears in the form. 6) Press "Save". Now the picked icon is assigned to the topic type and all instances are rendererd with the new icon.

Add your own icons to the iconpicker: 1) Drag'n'Drop an image file from your OS's file browser to the DM canvas. It appears as a "File" topic. 2) Retype the file topic to "Icon" by choosing "Retype" from its context menu. The "Retype Topic" dialog box appears. 3) Choose "Icon" from the menu and press "Retype". The dialog box closes and the topic is now an "Icon". From that moment it appears in the iconpicker dialog and can be used as described above.

IMPORTANT: to use the file drag'n'drop feature in Firefox see here: https://trac.deepamehta.de/ticket/78#comment:3

You must reset your DB. Furthermore in the core (for developers): add hook PRE_UPDATE_TOPIC. Close #49, #78, #82, #84, #85

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Files module: basically functional (#78)

Functionality like in DM3: Drop a bunch of files and folders from your filebrowser to the DM canvas. They are now represented as topics (of type "File" resp. "Folder").

There are 2 features:

1) to open the file in its original application doubleclick the file topic.

2) to display the file contents right in DM's content panel click the file topic. This is currently supported for:

Plain text Images Audio Video PDF

It should work with Firefox and Safari (Chrome not yet supported). Audio/Video??/PDF capabilities rely on your browser plugins. Certainly there is e.g. a Firefox PDF plugin for your OS available on the net.

IMPORTANT for Firefox: for the DM file handling capability to work you must set one particular preference. Type about:config in the Firefox address bar, then double-click the signed.applets.codebase_principal_support preference to set it to true (no Firefox restart required). Later on, when you drop a file to the canvas Firefox will ask you for permission to read the file. Click "Allow". (If you not set the particular preference, or if you click "Deny", Firefox has no access to your local files for security reasons.) This is only a workaround. Later versions of DM will not require this setting.

With Safari no extra setup is required.

See ticket #78.

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Files module: file browser works! (#90) Choose "New File Browser" from the create menu. See ticket #90.

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Proxy module: configurable IP ranges (#90).

In ./pom.xml there is a new property: <dm4.proxy.net.filter>127.0.0.1/32</dm4.proxy.net.filter>

The default is as shown. Only *one* range is supported for the moment.

Note: the file ./pom.xml exists in the development environment only (when you build from source code). For the end user (when you download the binary distribution) the config file is ./conf/config.properties

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Proxy: configurable file repo directory (#90).

In ./pom.xml there is a new property:

<dm4.proxy.files.path><dm4.proxy.files.path>

This is the file repository's root directory: An absolute path with *no* slash at the end.

To enable the entire file system specify an *empty string* (instead of "/"), as shown above. This is the default.

Example:

<dm4.proxy.files.path>/home/me/deepamehta/deepamehta-files<dm4.proxy.files.path>

See ticket #90.

Note: the file ./pom.xml exists in the development environment only (when you build from source code). For the end user (when you download the binary distribution) the config file is ./conf/config.properties

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Proxy: for the binary distribution both settings are found in ./conf/config.properties:

dm4.proxy.files.path
dm4.proxy.net.filter

See ticket #90

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Runtime: DM server runs in background (#46).

This affects stopping:

End users: stop DM by Ctrl-C (no stop 0anymore).
Server installation: stop DM by killing via PID.

See ticket #46.

Some new Pages for testing

A first page SandBoxOne which will contain a link to the page SandBox. The BackLinks Marcro on that page should reflect the reference.