When you edit a page, normally there is a little text box for the editor to briefly notate a description of changes made to the page. This is an incredibly useful mechanic as it saves time for admins and developers who now no longer need to view the history to find out what happened.
However, pages with data form structures do not have this functionality. I wish that a description of changes box could be implemented on pages sporting data forms, especially since the source code for these pages is much harder to read than for the regular pages anyway.
Design Suggestion (James)
Perhaps Wikidot could implement this and in Wikidot's base css make the "description of changes" display:none; in Data Forms only by default. That way we can "enable" this feature by modifying our site's CSS.
Rated up, however I'd like to disable this most of the time using CSS as well so if added it should be surrounded with appropriate CSS classes/ids in order to make that possible ;-)
Shane Smith
Web Developer and Wikidot Community Administrator
Links: Blog, Wikimated, Editor (STE), Documentation
I'd love to see this. It's fine if my users don't want to leave edit comments, but it's a bit vexing that, having switched to pages created via forms, I've traded away my ability to create any record of what I'm doing when I edit them!
I need this functionality A LOT. We have data form where field "progress" exists, as soon as somebody change that - it is very hard to see what changed; page history should show it, it is easiest and cleanest way.
Ideally it should be automatic as it works for "tags". If user add/remove a tag, page history shows "tag XXX was added"; I wish we could mark a field or fields in dataform with some attribute and as soon as you edit this field(s) system will write to the page history text like "progress changed from '45%' to '56%', worksite changed from '6' to '7' "
I don't think it should be hard to implement, please add this functionality or allow us to add this PHP(?) code
Thank you
If it is not possible to make page history to show changes in dataform automatically, then it should be possible to add "what changed comment" field as it exists for simple wiki pages.
As I understand, pages kept on server as simple text; even dataform-enabled pages. Page history kept in separate file(s) I suppose, and maintained by system itself. For system, filed "what changed comment" is a just a special field in the editor and if wikidot developers would allow dataform to edit this field (either by CSS or by adding special dataform field type) then we can add it to the forms and use it.
But ideally it should be automatic. For example, in dataform we can add optional attribute "hint" to some fields. Let say we can add optional attribute "savehistory" to the field(s). As soon as this field change, system PHP script will write to the change history text like:
"field 'name' now 'John', progress now 57%, state='excited' "
Form writer will be responsible do not add this attribute to fields which can be too long otherwise system will trim big text to let say 100 characters.
Please implement this!
Good idea. Something like this, for example?
Edit: Although that'd probably be a completely different wish.
Shane Smith
Web Developer and Wikidot Community Administrator
Links: Blog, Wikimated, Editor (STE), Documentation
yes, something like this. I was thinking about even simplier idea. System now shows message" Tags XXX, YYY added, tag(s) ZZZ removed".
therefore if (optional) "savepagehistory" property will appears near filed in dataform, a new string will be added to the page history, like
join-date now 'Last year'
in my case I have form with fileds
users usually change statustext from let say "25%" to "29%" and sometimes change filed "status"
so for me ideal page history would look like
Jun 2011: State now ' Flying', no Details
May 2011: State now ' Final production stage', Details now '89%'
Apr 2011: Details now '37%'
Mar 2011: Details now '19%'
Feb 2011: State now ' In production', Details now '8%'
jan 2011: State now 'Ordered'
note, it is only shows history of fileds, which actually have changed (and shows some string if text have been deleted from the filed.)
this way user might have 10 fileds in the form, only edit one or two but history will show only new text (old text already visible in the history anyway) of fileds which changed. No need to have fance formatting.
Although your solution would work for me (since we usually edit only 2 fileds) but generic one, with ideas borrowed from "tag XXX added/removed" might work even better and will not require complicated section "settings/comment/value" but only flag like
even more, this flag might not be needed anyway if all fileds would save their change history by default and if it would be simple enought to implement
pls rate this up
will it be ever be done? it is seems to be very simple to implement….