-[[!template id=plugin name=postcomment author="[[Simon_McVittie|smcv]]"]]
+[[!template id=plugin name=comments author="[[Simon_McVittie|smcv]]"]]
[[!tag type/useful]]
This plugin adds "blog-style" comments. The intention is that on a non-wiki site
>> admins (~= git committers) and possibly the commenter (who we can't check for
>> at the moment anyway, I don't think?) to be able to edit comments - I think
>> user expectations for something that looks like ordinary blog comments are
->> likely to include "others can't put words into my mouth". --[[smcv]]
-
-Directives and raw HTML are filtered out by default, and comment authorship should
-hopefully be unforgeable by CGI users.
+>> likely to include "others can't put words into my mouth".
+>>
+>> My other objection to using a namespace is that I'm not particularly happy about
+>> plugins consuming arbitrary pieces of the wiki namespace - /discussion is bad
+>> enough already. Indeed, this very page would accidentally get matched by rules
+>> aiming to control comment-posting... :-) --[[smcv]]
+
+>> Thinking about it, perhaps one way to address this would be to have the suffix
+>> (e.g. whether commenting on Sandbox creates sandbox/comment1 or sandbox/c1 or
+>> what) be configurable by the wiki admin, in the same way that recentchanges has
+>> recentchangespage => 'recentchanges'? I'd like to see fewer hard-coded page
+>> names in general, really - it seems odd to me that shortcuts and smileys
+>> hard-code the name of the page to look at. Perhaps I could add
+>> discussionpage => 'discussion' too? --[[smcv]]
+
+>> The best reason to keep the pages internal seems to me to be that you
+>> don't want the overhead of every comment spawning its own wiki page.
+>> The worst problem with it though is that you have to assume the pages
+>> are mdwn (or `default_pageext`) and not support other formats. --[[Joey]]
+
+>> Well, you could always have `comment1._mdwn`, `comment2._creole` etc. and
+>> alter the htmlize logic so that the `mdwn` hook is called for both `mdwn`
+>> and `_mdwn` (assuming this is not already the case). I'm not convinced
+>> that multi-format comments are a killer feature, though - part of the point
+>> of this plugin, in my mind, is that it's less flexible than the full power
+>> of ikiwiki and gives users fewer options. This could be construed
+>> to be a feature, for people who don't care how flexible the technology is
+>> and just want a simple way to leave a comment. The FormattingHelp page
+>> assumes you're writing 100% Markdown in any case...
+>>
+>> Internal pages do too many things, perhaps: they suppress generation of
+>> HTML pages, they disable editing over the web, and they have a different
+>> namespace of htmlize hooks. I think the first two of those are useful
+>> for this plugin, and the last is harmless; you seem to think the first
+>> is useful, and the other two are harmful. --[[smcv]]
+
+>> By the way, I think that who can post comments should be controllable by
+>> the existing plugins opendiscussion, anonok, signinedit, and lockedit. Allowing
+>> posting comments w/o any login, while a nice capability, can lead to
+>> spam problems. So, use `check_canedit` as at least a first-level check?
+>> --[[Joey]]
+
+>> This plugin already uses `check_canedit`, but that function doesn't have a concept
+>> of different actions. The hack I use is that when a user comments on, say, sandbox,
+>> I call `check_canedit` for the pseudo-page "sandbox[postcomment]". The
+>> special `postcomment(glob)` [[ikiwiki/pagespec]] returns true if the page ends with
+>> "[postcomment]" and the part before (e.g. sandbox) matches the glob. So, you can
+>> have postcomment(blog/*) or something. (Perhaps instead of taking a glob, postcomment
+>> should take a pagespec, so you can have postcomment(link(tags/commentable))?)
+>>
+>> This is why `anonok_pages => 'postcomment(*)'` and `locked_pages => '!postcomment(*)'`
+>> are necessary to allow anonymous and logged-in editing (respectively).
+>>
+>> This is ugly - one alternative would be to add `check_permission()` that takes a
+>> page and a verb (create, edit, rename, remove and maybe comment are the ones I
+>> can think of so far), use that, and port the plugins you mentioned to use that
+>> API too. This plugin could either call `check_can("$page/comment1", 'create')` or
+>> call `check_can($page, 'comment')`.
+>>
+>> One odd effect of the code structure I've used is that we check for the ability to
+>> create the page before we actually know what page name we're going to use - when
+>> posting the comment I just increment a number until I reach an unused one - so
+>> either the code needs restructuring, or the permission check for 'create' would
+>> always be for 'comment1' and never 'comment123'. --[[smcv]]
+
+When using this plugin, you should also enable [[htmlscrubber]] and either [[htmltidy]]
+or [[htmlbalance]]. Directives are filtered out by default, to avoid commenters slowing
+down the wiki by causing time-consuming processing. As long as the recommended plugins
+are enabled, comment authorship should hopefully be unforgeable by CGI users.
> I'm not sure that raw html should be a problem, as long as the
> htmlsanitizer and htmlbalanced plugins are enabled. I can see filtering
>> I was initially wary of allowing meta directives, but I think those are OK, as long
>> as the comment template puts the \[[!meta author]] at the *end*. Disallowing
>> directives is more a way to avoid commenters causing expensive processing than
->> anything else, at this point. --[[smcv]]
+>> anything else, at this point.
+>>
+>> I've rebased the plugin on master, made it sanitize individual posts' content
+>> and removed the option to disallow raw HTML. Sanitizing individual posts before
+>> they've been htmlized required me to preserve whitespace in the htmlbalance
+>> plugin, so I did that. Alternatively, we could htmlize immediately and always
+>> save out raw HTML? --[[smcv]]
+
+>> There might be some use cases for other directives, such as img, in
+>> comments.
+>>
+>> I don't know if meta is "safe" (ie, guaranteed to be inexpensive and not
+>> allow users to do annoying things) or if it will continue to be in the
+>> future. Hard to predict really, all that can be said with certainty is
+>> all directives will contine to be inexpensive and safe enough that it's
+>> sensible to allow users to (ab)use them on open wikis.
+>> --[[Joey]]
When comments have been enabled generally, you still need to mark which pages
-can have comments, by including the `\[[!postcomment]]` directive in them. By default,
+can have comments, by including the `\[[!comments]]` directive in them. By default,
this directive expands to a "post a comment" link plus an `\[[!inline]]` with
the comments.
>> Then control freaks like me could use "link(tags/comments)" and tag pages
>> as allowing comments.
>>
+>>> Yes, I think a pagespec is the way to go. --[[Joey]]
+>>
>> The model used for discussion pages does require patching the existing
>> page template, which I was trying to avoid - I'm not convinced that having
>> every possible feature hard-coded there really scales (and obviously it's
>> rather annoying while this plugin is on a branch). --[[smcv]]
+>>> Using the template would allow customising the html around the comments
+>>> which seems like a good thing? --[[Joey]]
+
+>>> The \[[!comments]] directive is already template-friendly - it expands to
+>>> the contents of the template `comments_embed.tmpl`, possibly with the
+>>> result of an \[[!inline]] appended. I should change `comments_embed.tmpl`
+>>> so it uses a template variable `INLINE` for the inline result rather than
+>>> having the perl code concatenate it, which would allow a bit more
+>>> customization (whether the "post" link was before or after the inline).
+>>> Even if you want comments in page.tmpl, keeping the separate comments_embed.tmpl
+>>> and having a `COMMENTS` variable in page.tmpl might be the way forward,
+>>> since the smaller each templates is, the easier it will be for users
+>>> to maintain a patched set of templates. (I think so, anyway, based on what happens
+>>> with dpkg prompts in Debian packages with monolithic vs split
+>>> conffiles.) --[[smcv]]
+
The plugin adds a new [[ikiwiki/PageSpec]] match type, `postcomment`, for use
with `anonok_pagespec` from the [[plugins/anonok]] plugin or `locked_pages` from
the [[plugins/lockedit]] plugin. Typical usage would be something like:
to allow anonymous comments (the IP address will be used as the "author").
-Optional parameters to the postcomment directive:
+> This is still called postcomment, although I've renamed the rest of the plugin
+> to comments as suggested on #ikiwiki --[[smcv]]
+
+Optional parameters to the comments directive:
* `commit=no`: by default, comments are committed to version control. Use this to
disable commits.
-* `allowhtml=yes`: by default, raw HTML is filtered out. Use this to allow HTML
- (you should enable [[plugins/htmlscrubber]] and either [[plugins/htmltidy]] or
- [[plugins/contrib/htmlbalance]] if you do this).
* `allowdirectives=yes`: by default, IkiWiki directives are filtered out. Use this
to allow directives (avoid enabling any [[plugins/type/slow]] directives if you
do this).
* `closed=yes`: use this to prevent new comments while still displaying existing ones.
* `atom`, `rss`, `feeds`, `feedshow`, `timeformat`, `feedonly`: the same as for [[plugins/inline]]
+>> I don't think feedonly actually makes sense here, so I'll remove it. --[[smcv]]
+
This plugin aims to close the [[todo]] item "[[todo/supporting_comments_via_disussion_pages]]",
-and is currently available from [[smcv]]'s git repository on git.pseudorandom.co.uk.
+and is currently available from [[smcv]]'s git repository on git.pseudorandom.co.uk (it's the
+`postcomment` branch). A demo wiki with the plugin enabled is running at
+<http://www.pseudorandom.co.uk/2008/ikiwiki/demo/>.
Known issues:
* The access control via postcomment() is rather strange
* There is some common code cargo-culted from other plugins (notably inline and editpage) which
should probably be shared
-* If the postcomment directive is removed from a page, comments can still be made on that page,
+* If the comments directive is removed from a page, comments can still be made on that page,
and will be committed but not displayed; to disable comments properly you have to set the
closed="yes" directive parameter (and refresh the wiki), *then* remove the directive if
desired
> I haven't done a detailed code review, but I will say I'm pleased you
> avoided re-implementing inline! --[[Joey]]
+
+Wishlist:
+
+* tbm would like anonymous people to be able to enter their name and possibly email
+ address
+* smcv would like an indication of who you're posting as / the ability to log in
+ as someone else (even if anonymous comments are allowed, it'd be nice to be
+ able to choose to log in with a username or OpenID, like in Livejournal);
+ perhaps editpage needs this too