from Niels Mayer niels mayer at gmail.com to dev@xwiki.org, XWiki Users date Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 11:35 AM subject MIT Simile Widgets (spiffy JS Timeline/Timeplot/Timegrid) for Xwiki? mailed-by gmail.com

Has anybody integrated any of MIT's open source "Project Simile" ( http://code.google.com/p/simile-widgets/ ) JS widgetry into Xwiki? For example their http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/
http://simile.mit.edu/timeplot/ or http://simile.mit.edu/timegrid/ ??

This has been discussed previously on these lists:
http://markmail.org/message/bds6fein6w4ftqot#query:MIT Simile Xwiki+page:1+mid:55peh7tm5z2vjoyd+state:results
http://markmail.org/message/bds6fein6w4ftqot#query:MIT Simile Xwiki+page:1+mid:xu5d32bukkmtdldx+state:results
http://markmail.org/message/bds6fein6w4ftqot#query:MIT Simile Xwiki+page:1+mid:hefinq3w652jrkiy+state:results
http://markmail.org/message/bds6fein6w4ftqot#query:MIT Simile Xwiki+page:1+mid:yd4a3nb2mk6e3fdu+state:results
http://markmail.org/message/bds6fein6w4ftqot#query:MIT Simile Xwiki+page:1+mid:nt5t5e27ccykrnx4+state:results

Unfortunately, all the emails mention example links that no longer exist, so there's no obvious Xwiki examples providing Simile widgetry in Xwiki ...

FYI, Other environments have integrated some of the MIT functionality:
http://drupal.org/project/timeline
http://drupal.org/project/exhibit
http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Wibbit

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com

from Jean-Vincent Drean jean vincent at drean.org reply-to XWiki Users to XWiki Users date Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 1:44 PM subject Re: [xwiki-users] MIT Simile Widgets (spiffy JS Timeline/Timeplot/Timegrid) for Xwiki? mailing list users.xwiki.org

Hi,

I've played quite a lot with Simile Timeline in the past.
I've made a little snippet showing last modifications within the wiki
on code.xwiki.org :
http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Snippets/TimelineSnippet

JV

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from    Niels Mayer gmail.com>
to      XWiki Users xwiki.org>
date    Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 11:42 AM
subject Re: [xwiki-users] MIT Simile Widgets (spiffy JS Timeline/Timeplot/Timegrid) for Xwiki?

I've updated and commented the Timeline example (
http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Snippets/TimelineSnippet ) in
preparation of my nefarious deconstruction of the widget into a novel
interface for a totally different form of usage ...

working example:
 http://nielsmayer.com/xwiki/bin/view/Timeline/TL2

sources:
 http://nielsmayer.com/xwiki/bin/view/Timeline/TL2?viewer=code
 http://nielsmayer.com/xwiki/bin/view/Timeline/ChangesList?viewer=code

Next steps is to remove this constraint (suggested in http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Snippets/TimelineSnippet ). If you forget to do this, nothing works;  yet, adding it is quite annoying and shouldn't be needed:

   Prerequisites
   You must add this line:
   
   At the bottom of the "HTTP Meta Information" field in Administration > Presentation.

Seems like the following links are good starting points for a solution to the above issue:
http://blog.localkinegrinds.com/2007/11/06/installing-mit-similes-timeline-locally-w-rails-integration/
http://simile.mit.edu/mail/ReadMsg?listId=10&msgId=19202
http://simile.mit.edu/mail/ReadMsg?listId=10&msgId=19199

This entails installing a local copy of the timeline javascript and modifying a few lines of source. Othewise, with the existing solution, you're stuck with loading the simile javascript for any page on your site, slowing down the initial load time even more with yet more global javascript that never gets called in most situations. (Alternately, perhaps catenating all the timeline javascript and shoving it into a single xwiki doc or template that gets included only in a timeline-using app).

- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com

PS: I think it would be interesting to put extra attributes on certain sets of documents, and then sql-query for those documents with those attributes and present them in the timeline. That way,  for example,
one could render a sequence of steps over time, where each step is a xwiki doc. There's no reason why the horizontal axis needs to represent discrete time. It can represent any monotonically increasing sequence. For example, editing the sequence of steps and concurrent streaming media for purposes of making a movie or real-time presentation composed from wiki components.

PPS: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/XQuery/DBpedia_with_SPARQL_and_Simile_Timeline_-_Album_Chronology
is another interesting application of the Timeline widget. It would be interesting if xwiki could support SPARQL ( http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-XMLres/ ). The timeline widget doesn't necessarily need to be used as a timeline… you could also use it to present complex database result sets laid out in two-dimensions, for example (e.g. search hits presented over topic and confidence in matching.).

--------------

PPPS: later suggested in chat as a means of providing timeline functionality (and loading the timeline JS only into specific pages needing the Timeline):

(11:54:56 AM) vmassol: npm: nice timeline. would be great if you could improve a bit the timeline page on xwiki.org (http://code.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Snippets/TimelineSnippet)
...
(11:58:12 AM) npm: after i figure out how to remove the install
constraint, that's when it would be worth updating
(11:58:46 AM) vmassol: npm: I think you can fix this easily using our
new jsx (javascript extensions)
(11:59:03 AM) vmassol: see http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/SkinExtensionsTutorial
if you haven't seen it yet
-----------------------------

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NB: see http://code.google.com/p/simile-widgets/wiki/Timeline_CreatingNewThemes for info on customizations that are possible, like

var theme = Timeline.ClassicTheme.create(); // create the theme 
theme.event.bubble.width = 350;   // modify it 
theme.event.bubble.height = 300;
theme.event.track.height = 15;
theme.event.tape.height = 8;