Roadmap for TWiki

At the relaunch of the TWiki.org project on 27 Oct 2008 we expanded the roadmap a bit to the broader TWikiCharter to become a leading open source Enterprise Web 2.0 platform. The roadmap looks approx one year out in the future and is assumed to be reviewed every 6 months.

Road Map

• Usability:
  • Seamless, quick, extensible WYSIWYG
  • Manage TML code via "sectional edit" widgets
  • Point and click permissions
  • Flow of manipulating content: File upload, more screen,... Drag and drop file attachments
  • Copy existing page to make new page
  • Clean up diff's presentation of page history
• Performance & scalability:
  • Fast structured queries
  • Fast text search including attachment content
  • SQL Storage back-end that scales to gazillions of pages with compatibility and audit trail
  • Address high traffic bottlenecks by e.g. implementing caching
  • Topic Object Model
  • Archive Data
• Application platform:
  • Easy ways to build & exchange applications & component
  • TWiki API for Java programmers
• Internationalization:
  • Full UTF-8 Support (including WikiWords),both LR and RL.
• Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) Features:
  • Ad-hoc creation of communities, invite to community, join/leave a community
  • ESN specific search
  • Definition of standard ESN fields and their relation to LDAP
• Mashups:
  • Easy ways to mash up different data sources & applications (XML/SOAP/JSON/OpenSocial toolkit)
  • Tight Integration with other related applications, such as Sharepoint, Google Search Appliance, SalesForce, Bugzilla, Nagios
• Skins:
  • Stable template baseline for skins
  • Easily customizable skin
• Administration:
  • Improved User, group and other management
  • Add site metrics, User page views, user page adds over time
  • Content converters to import content from other wiki platforms
• Documentation:
  • Reorganize and polish content of the TWiki distribution to be more accessible, not only for TWiki Administrators or developers
  • Refactor TWiki.org site navigation and presentation to be more accessible by evaluators and press/bloggers

NOTE: The roadmap in no way excludes anyone from contributing features in other areas. Contributors can raise proposals per TWikiReleaseManagementProcess.

-- Contributors: AndreaSterbini, ArthurClemens, CarloSchulz, ColasNahaboo, CrawfordCurrie, EmanueleCupido, KennethLavrsen, KoenMartens, PeterThoeny, RodBeckstrom, Sander Duivestein, SteffenPoulsen - 06 Apr 2009

Old roadmap discussions have been moved to TWikiRoadMapHistory

Latest Road Map Discussions

• TWikiRoadMapDiscussionFiveDotZero - discuss our roadmap to TWiki 5
• See CoreStatus20080127 - where we are now
• ExtendedTWikiRoadMap

Overview of Road Map pages

The following topics are part of CategoryRoadmap in the Codev web and Plugins web:

Notes:

• This table is automatically generated
• A category is a grouping of related topics
• A topic is added to a category by writing "Category<category name>" in the RelatedTopics form field - for example, "CategoryExperimental"
• Visit CategoryCategory to see all existing categories and to contribute new categories

Personal Road Maps

Create your personal road map at PersonalRoadmap. That page also lists all personal roadmaps.

Discussions

Summit discussed skin. Some quotes in italic. They are quotes for further discussions and should be not taken as decisions or conclusions

• Need a meeting with skin developers to conclude on this point.
• Provide a simple way for new TWiki admins to create/modify a skin to get the look of a corporate branding standard
• Easier to upgrade TWiki without having your tailorings redone
• (added after summit) - simplifying upgrades is one of the major requirements for MoveableTypeSkin, which decouples the TWiki's look and feel from TWiki features, creating a css based design environment which will not require changing as TWiki changes.

-- unknown - 2007

I read in "perf & scalability" -> "SQL Storage back-end" will back-end in flat files, has it is done today, will still be available !? I really appreciate twiki flat files: it helps when apache is down -> vi the file directly from the filesystem it helps when editing a page for automatic replacements -> vi (or whatever editor) the file and use the replace function it helps also when installing twiki in an ISP that doesn't provide database services.

-- JehanProcaccia - 30 Oct 2008

This has not yet been designed, but likely there will be either a choice on back-end (flat file or DB), or a DB cache to scale flat files. Compatibility is key; to "protect user investment, ensure data integrity" is part of the TWikiMission.

-- PeterThoeny - 30 Oct 2008

Have you considered using Git as a back-end? It would provide a number of things you are looking for in a database and preserve storage on the file system. I'm keen on having formatted information (form fields etc) in a database but not so keen on having the entire tree there.

-- SimonClift - 04 Dec 2008

When I experimented with SQLite as the DB, I used the DB for reading and searching, and still did a "write through" to the flat-files in the background. From my experience it is not the writing which slows TWiki down. Having the flat files (with a script to refresh the DB should it get out of sync) is quite handy.

-- CraigMeyer - 2009-04-05

Is there a more up-to-date roadmap I can refer to, or are there no solid plans for enhancements/changes over the next few years/releases? Thanks

-- Seeta Patel - 2016-08-04

We have not updated the roadmap for some time. Nowadays we define a release focus per release. See KampalaRelease for the current one.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2016-08-06