[Silva-general] new kupu features in the Silva trunk (2.2)

[Andy Altepeter]

Greetings Generals!

I wanted to take some time and give you a heads-up on some of the new 
functional-oriented features of the current Silva trunk's kupu, which will 
become Silva 2.2.

1) Resizing images in kupu is here!  The handlebars around a selected image in 
IE and FF has always allowed the author to visually resize the image (but 
would disappear upon saving).  Now upon dragging the handlebars, a button 
appears in the image tool labeled 'confirm resize'.  When this button is 
clicked, the web format of the image is resized to the dimensions of the 
image in the document.  Why a button?  We felt that committing a resize of 
the web format of the image whenever a drag was completed could cause too 
many resizes of the image to be committed to the ZODB.  It's possible an 
author may drag an image many times until it is "just right".  The author is 
prompted to confirm the resize if the selection is moved away from a resized 
image.  This is an exciting feature!

Additionally, making the action explicit paves the way for enhanced 
notifications in the future.  There is only one web format of an image, and 
this image may appear in many documents -- including ones the author may not 
know about.  Resizing the image _will_ affect the published version of those 
documents!  By 'enhanced notifications' I mean that once Silva has internal 
reference management (which is getting closer to reality), a notification 
could be raised to inform the author that committing the resize will affect 
the other documents referencing the image.

2) The second coolest feature is a new "kupu popup" formulator field!  This 
field enables wysiwyg-edited rich text parameters of external sources.  The 
formulator field is configurable to restrict the popupkupu to only those 
buttons/tools that are desired for that parameter, e.g. a parameter which 
only allows plain paragraphs with bold, underlined or italicized text.  The 
new citation code source, which is installed by default in new 2.2 instances 
and replaces the citation tool, uses this kupupopup formulator field.  No 
longer do you need to have a textbox parameter accepting raw html in a code 
source!

2) Lookup Window: In the link tool, if a link is active when the lookup window 
is opened, it opens to the document's container.  This can be annoying 
particularly if the active link is a few containers away and the desired 
change is in the same container as the active link.  Now, the lookup window 
opens to the active links container.

3) It's now possible to switch an abbreviation to an acronym and vice-versa.

4) keyboard navigation around tables and external sources is improved

That's it for the list of coolest functional-oriented kupu features.  There 
are many more improvements and bug fixes in Silva 2.2, which you can read in 
the full HISTORY.txt in the Silva product of the new trunk you'll be testing 
out after reading this e-mail :-)

Testing the Trunk:
The process of testing out Silva has really changed since 2.0. The preferred 
method is by using buildout.  Buildout is a tool used to automate software 
installation..  In this case, buildout automates a fresh Silva 2.2 
environment, complete with the correct zope version and all required python 
packages.

At this point, I want to bring your attention to docs.infrae.com.  It has some 
great documentation on using buildout to build a fresh silva instance (thanks 
sylvain!):
http://docs.infrae.com/silva/buildout.html

So, check it out!  Please tell us what works, what doesn't work, and what you 
like/don't like.  Your feedback will be much appreciated whether it be 
through this list, silva-dev, or via a launchpad.net bug report.

Take care,
Andy