When adding lots of small comments, the full signature is a bit big. People tend to use just their initials, but it conveys little information.

I coded an addon that propose on the edit view also a simplified signature of the form:

- [[Main.ColasNahaboo#04Jun102][CN]] <== This is a terser version of your signature for copy & paste

This gives a simple signature as initials: - CN

But, if you move your mouse pointer on it, the displayed URL shows the full wiki name and the date of the comment (after the #).

Patch:

• patch the script bin/edit with attached patch (adds 6 lines at the end)
• if you want to use it, use it via the new %INITIALS% variable in the edit template, for instance:

<br /> <b> - <nop>%INITIALS%</b> &nbsp;&nbsp;<code>&lt;==</code> 
This is a terser version of your signature for copy & paste

PS: this patch will be included in KoalaSkin v1.12

-- CN

---

Ironic that you didn't sign this

Nice feature, would be good to use the title attribute as well so that mouseover of signature provides a tooltip of the longer sig.

-- RichardDonkin - 05 Jun 2002

I like this idea.

How about a Wikified terse signature? E.g. CoNa instead of CN, and PeTh instead of PT? That would reduce the chance of two people having the same terse signature and it is easier to guess who signed.

-- PeterThoeny - 05 Jun 2002

• Title attribute: I fear it would make the sig too big in edit view, polluting the text The current form is Ok in text, using title would mean a more cumbersome <a href...= html form
• Wikified: If you go this way, I would better have a field in the home page named "initials" or "short name". Many of us have short nicknames that are not much longuer than 4 letters, e.g... "Colas" You can use the code I did to fetch the email field if you want in OmittingEmailInWebNotify

-- ColasNahaboo - 05 Jun 2002

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I updated my patch (now v2, of 07 Jun 2002)

Added feature: if there is an "Initials" field in your home page (like Email:, etc...) its value is taken instead of computing yours.

This patch checks for error conditions:

• If you are TWikiGuest, shows just a ? instead of "TWG"
• If there is no home page, redirect to a topic in Test, aspointing to the home page run the risk of creating it, causing lots of problems.

-- ColasNahaboo - 07 Jun 2002

Looks good, but I think the '?' would be confusing as it looks like a link to non-existent page. Something like TWG, TG or GU would be better IMO.

-- RichardDonkin - 08 Jun 2002

I am open to suggestions. Originally I thought of "??". But I would like to avoid something looking like real initials. Maybe just a plain "Guest" ? - Or better, take the "Initials: field of the TWikiGuest home page...

-- ColasNahaboo - 08 Jun 2002

The last suggestion is the best one, in my opinion (take the initials field of the TwikiGuest home page).

-- ThomasWeigert - 08 Jun 2002

For me, TWG does not mean anything. Guest is not much longer, and has a meaning. Same like Colas prefers "Colas" over CN or CoNa.

Another proposal: In one big company I worked, it was a rule: First letter of first name, and first two letters of the last name. If combination was taken, your pick how to create valid signature: either another letter from your last name (or possible middle name for those having it), or just number: MM2 will be not-MikeMannix.

-- PeterMasiar - 09 Jun 2002

Another proposal, which should probably be optional by installation or by web: A friend of mine says the main reason he hesitates to edit other people's text on a Wiki is that it seems too much like editing someone else's text, instead of editing a communal text. This is, apparently, because of the signature that appears at the bottom of a new page by default. So perhaps it should be possible to set up a web so as to create no signature on a new page. Proper attribution of who-said-what can be obtained from the CVS log by looking at the differences page.

-- HendrikBoom - 10 Jun 2002

Unsigned text can be appropriate in certain environments. In fact, that is the main way of collaboration in the original c2 Wiki.

You can define a customized template per web, e.g. a template without a signature. Go to the WebPreferences in question and create/edit the WebTopicEditTemplate.

-- PeterThoeny - 10 Jun 2002

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Another version of my patch: v3 - 13 Jun 2002

• Added default name for TWikiGuest as "Guest", but redefinable via "Initials:"
• People here asked for various features (date in the initials, etc...) So I just made the code expand the %- vars in Initials, so if you want you can put in your Home Page something like:

   * Initials: CN-%GMTIME{"$day$month$ye"}%

to get someting like: CN-13Jun02

-- ColasNahaboo - 13 Jun 2002

I encountered some perl install with a Y2K bug (you will see something like Main.ColasNahaboo#13Jun102 instead of Main.ColasNahaboo#13Jun02 ) to fix them add the 2 lines in bin/edit before the my $simplesig = line:

    # y2k bug fix for broken perls!
    $year =~ s/10([0-9])/0\1/;

-- ColasNahaboo - 26 Jul 2002

It would be nice to have this invoked by the Sig button on the JavascriptBasedEditor

-- MartinCleaver - 28 Jul 2002

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Just note that this patch also works for the Beijing - 01 Feb 2003 release, with some warnings that you can ignore:

patching file bin/edit
Hunk #1 succeeded at 250 with fuzz 2 (offset 31 lines).
Hunk #2 succeeded at 284 (offset 31 lines).

-- ColasNahaboo - 25 Feb 2003

I think this would be nice to have in Cairo. Unless anyone objects I'm going to commit it.

-- WalterMundt - 16 Feb 2004

Patch committed. Does anything need to be documented for this? Perhaps some mention in the tutorial?

-- WalterMundt - 21 Feb 2004

May I propose to change the spec. The current terse signature is to big (aka not so readable) in edit mode. Further, there is no need to list the full WikiWord link and the initials.

Proposed:

• The edit screen has this help:
  -- Main.PeterThoeny - 13 Mar 2004   <== Your signature for easy copy and paste
  -- INITIALS:Main.PeterThoeny - 13 Mar 2004   <== The initials of your signature (help)
• TWiki renders -- INITIALS:Main.PeterThoeny - 13 Mar 2004 as -- PTh
  • The tooltip shows the spaced name and date
  • The link label (aka initial) is taken from the Initials bullet of the home page if it exists, else the initial chars of first name and last name (PT)
  • Remove the %INITIALS% variable since no more used

This is a little bit more expensive at runtime. But it has the advantage that the signature is readable in edit mode; shows a nice tooltip; and allows users to change the initial in the home page.

-- PeterThoeny - 13 Mar 2004

That sounds fine with me. You should be aware that the current implementation already allows you to change your initials on your home page, by adding an Initials: line.

-- WalterMundt - 13 Mar 2004

Yes, but that does not change all the sigs in the existing topics.

-- PeterThoeny - 13 Mar 2004

Well, I am not very confortable with this proposal for the following reasons:

• As you say, it brings overhead in view mode, proportionally with the number of signatures. (mine brings overhead only to edit view).
• It is not much more readable that the current proposal
• but most important, it introduces yet another TWiki syntax. I think this is the most problematic, both for users and for code. One should tend to regulartity: if you look at all modern systems, the trend is to be able to have regular syntax: in XML, you can detect tags even if you didnt understand them: In HTML you must known that &ltimg> do not have closing tags.

So, I think that if really you find my form hard to read, we could either:

• Make my form more readable by enhancing the standard [[...]] construct: for instance having a tooltip showing the url
• Use a %INITIAL{...}% construct
• If you really want another TWiki syntax more readable than %INITIAL{, I think it could be a good idea, but it would be worth introducing it as a general syntax so that it could be used by other addons/plugins, e.g:
  <initials who='Peter Thoeny' date='13 Mar 2004'>
<initials PeterThoeny - 13 Mar 2004>

-- CN

Colas, what I don't like about your new sig is that it does not show the date. There is a lot of value of seeing (without mousing over the signature and checking in the status line, when a contribution was made. You, of course, realize that there is no anchor in most people's home page with the name of the date, so there seems not much point in creating a reference to that anchor. Instead, it would be better to show a tool tip instead. But to be honest, this seems a lot of effort for no real gain?

Regarding the notes in the edit page:

See below for help in editing this page. 
-- Main.ThomasWeigert - 14 Mar 2004       <== Your signature for easy copy and paste (triple click to select) 
-- [[Main.ThomasWeigert#14Mar104][TW]]    <== Your initials, for signing small comments help) 

Only for the first signature does it say that you can triple click to select albeit it works for both. Only the second line shows the link to help albeit it applies to both. This is confusing to beginners at whom the comments are addressed in the first place. I'd suggest to make this clearer.

-- ThomasWeigert - 14 Mar 2004

• it can show the date if you want, use in your home page:

   * Initials: CN-%GMTIME{"$day$month$ye"}%

• as for tooltips, yes it could be a nice feature, but it should be added for all TWiki links with square brackets, not just signatures
• terser signatures are for really small contributions. For instance in things like:
  • who agrees? CN AM BZ
• as for the text, it is a skin issue. You can see on http:koala.ilog.fr/wiki the current versiuon, which is:

-- ColasNahaboo - 15 Mar 2004

<-- Ready to copy & paste signature

- [[Main.ColasNahaboo#15Mar104][CN]]

<-- terser signature

15 Mar 2004

(triple click under most browsers)

-- ColasNahaboo - 15 Mar 2004

I would like to bring this up again. Call to change the spec of the terser signature. There are two unresolved issues:

1. People on TWiki.org sometimes sign with the terser signature for regular ThreadMode contributions. I find myself scanning over text not noticing that the author changed because the sig is so small.
   • Small sigs are useful for bullet discussions -- PTh
2. It uses valuable screen real estate. Just one line, but it is one extra line that could be used for editing content.

-- PeterThoeny - 02 Jun 2004

I agree. I think we should pull this change out of Cairo. A typical reaction when showing TWiki to a new user is for them to point to the signature on the edit page and gasp "oh my goodness, what's that?"

-- CrawfordCurrie - 02 Jul 2004

pulled - I'm voting for plugin land (but thats harder)

-- SvenDowideit - 06 Jul 2004

I uploaded the patch to re-put it in for Koala Skin users (for the Cairo version). I think it should be back in (but could be in another form). Why?

• users actually use it (by imitation)
• it imposes no runtime penalty in the view mode (unlike a plugin solution)
• if the skin do not use it you wont see it

I agree the current form is ugly. One could thing of a better form as something like writing ~~CN or optionally ~~CN#15Mar04 and have TWiki render it as a link to a script that would redirect to the home page(s) having CN in its Initials: field

But the functionality is needed.

-- ColasNahaboo - 30 Dec 2004

There's still an echo of this pulled patch on GoodStyle in CairoRelease - see the section on signatures. I've annotated that topic to say that the reference should be deleted, if no-one else follows up I'll do it meself when I'm next on the site.

-- GarethEdwards - 04 Jan 2005

I've removed the offending line from GoodStyle.

-- GarethEdwards - 19 Jan 2005

> It uses valuable screen real estate. Just one line, but it is one extra line that could be used for editing content.

Not having a picture in front of me, I don't know what this means. I'm guessing an extra line right underneath "Your signature for easy copy and paste: ..." which looks like "Your initial sig: ~~MW" ?

In which case, a remedy could be to just drop the hint from the edit screen, leaving it's use to power users.

However when it comes to the issue of losing valuable editing screen real estate the real bad guy is the Form and Help text. Right now I see 24 rows of text after the edit textarea, not couting whitespace. That's more than the default textarea height of 22 and it doesn't have whitespace padding.

-- MattWilkie - 25 Feb 2005