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By Dries on
With Drupal 4.5 around the corner, it is time to start talking about Drupal 4.6. If you plan to work on something, or to contribute to Drupal in one way or another, please share your personal battle plan in the comments. We are merely interested in what you plan to contribute, rather than what you'd like other people to work on. So please do not post personal wishlists and read on for more information.
Based on feedback of the community, I created two initial figures that I believe represent the key areas we should be working on -- and that I plan to (help) work on myself. The first figure presents a battle plan for Drupal 4.6 and above. The second graph depicts a battle plan for our website, drupal.org. The most important items are denoted in red.
Note that the figures are not complete and that they are subject to change, however, I think they pretty much summarize my personal view. As always, your view and battle plan may vary. If you plan to contribute to Drupal, and don't know where to start, mine and the other battle plans are a good starting point.
Drupal battle plan
Drupal.org battle plan
So, what is your view and what can we expect from you for Drupal 4.6?
Comments
Templateability and Documentation
I'm fairly new to Drupal, though I've been looking in on the project from time to time since the beginning. I'm going to be setting up some more Drupal 4.5 test sites for some concept testing and I'd be willing to commit to setting up a 4.6 test site, too, as soon as practicable. My concept, a collaborative fiction site, pushes the Drupal envelope a bit, so what I learn in doing this with 4.5 (necessary hacks, etc), I would be willing to work on coding into Drupal 4.6, as contributed module or suggested modifications to the core or hacksuite.
One area I can see myself working on for sure is continued improvement and expansion of the templateability of Drupal, already superior to most other CMSs.
The other area of my main interest and abilities is proofing and editing of documentation, including organizing and reading for useability of manuals and instructions.
- halfelven
mindmapping and more
cool stuff
maybe we should focus in 4.6 or above on
btw: for those who like the mindmaps, see the good free mindmaping software
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groets
bertb
--
groets
bert boerland
integration work important
I'm very interested in working on integration aspects. I'm in the process of building a vitrual organization collaboration space that is planned to allow people to instantiate a vo and pick from a collection of tools that acts in an integrated manner (cms, mailling list, file store, etc). Drupal is one of the tools I am using (and making the needed mods to make it work - it's got a lot of good points already and that's why i picked to start with).
Fundamentally, that means recognizing the same users and groups across all tools. While LDAP backends are helpful, it's really important for clean seperation of authentication, account definitions and authorization.
Again, very interested in this and have put some significant thought time into it so far and am not at the point of starting the integration work.
Images breaks the layout
An installer would be nice. And theme setting that carry in to the administration GUI. It's the details that count more than the addition of features. Right now those thing that would make the most improvement have to do with installation, configuration and documentation. Stick with those for a while until you get a system that matches the development process.
BTW,
You might want to put that image in a scrolling div or something so it doesn't break the layout of this site.
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia
www.heroforhire.net
No wishlists
Please only post what /you/ will be working on.
bert, carl, all
dries' first 3 sentences were these:
please respect this. thanks!
correct, documentation
documentation is afraid the one thing 'll be working on.
--
groets
bertb
--
groets
bert boerland
And?
Saying you'll be working on documentation is a great 4.6 battle plan. Just because it's not code doesn't mean it's not useful.
We just want to avoid people saying "I would like Drupal to do X or Y".
thanks
I quess I own my new "rights to outline stuff in a book" to this?
--
groets
bertb
--
groets
bert boerland
i18n, flexinode, drupalCOM
As most of my clients need (simple) corporate websites, I plan to aim my arrows at making drupal much more corporate friendly.
Core stuff corporate sits need include: metadata-content approach [1] and language switches. In the EU you really need multilingual facilities these days.
Core stuff corporate sites do *not* need are: all community features. These need to be all removeable. So I will try to address issues that force drupal sites to become community sites (think of, for example "foo's blog".
But in general I will try to get flexinode (or an extraction thereof) to be more prominent in Drupal as a whole. I have successfully converted blog.module to use flexinode, and I have some more flexinode modules in the workings. I believe the metadata approach is crucial for any website that levers itself above that personal blog.
The translation is really crucial for me too. It currently works so so. I mean: It works, but there are still loads of problems that need attention (to name one: translating and filemanagement do not go well together as yet). I would like to move some things from locale into i18n (to name one: why support lots of languages in locale if you can use only one? That should go to i18n, IMHO), some stuff from i18n into locale (to name one: returning locale arrays), and maybe some functions into core. Allthough the later should not be a focus, I believe it is important to make the translation work in a clean, efficient (drupalish) way. After all: why should revision control be allowed on core level, but something as complex as synching content not? (please do not start commenting here about this, I will open discussions on this somewhere else later).
I wnat to bundle these and make my drupalCOM into a beta release, so that we can work towards a full release of it, in Drupal 4.7.
And last, but certainly not least, I want the Theme Garden [2] to become a nice website. One where people on the net talk about. I want it to become a showcase, and "sandbox" for all our themes and more themes. I hope to receive some interesting themes or otherwise find time to finish mine :)
and very last but not least I hope To be able to help more people get to experience Drupal. Not only spreading the word, but also helping on the support lists and forums is important IMHO.
[Ber | Drupal Services webschuur.com]
[1] metadata approach vs inline (wysiwyg) appr. http://bler.webschuur.com/node/view/145
[2] http://webschuur.drupaldevs.org/
i18n, drupalCOM
Hey, I am working in the same two.
My project of drupalCOM was named drupalCO, but I like drupalcom more :-). I am working in two different directions:
- Corporate website
- Intranet
The corporate website would be a specially packaged and pre-configured version of Drupal, removing some community features as you said, plus full multi-language, product catalog, and maybe the e-commerce module from contrib.
The intranet version will be more community oriented, with improved access control, file repository, events....
For the moment I am focusing on i18n, for which I will outline my plans somewhere else, just to have a separate thread. But I'd like to be contributing to this drupalCOM thing -my drupalCO is currently out of date, as I had just a proof of concept and I haven't kept up with latest releases of Drupal.
https://reyero.net
roadmap, taskforces
First I must say that I really like Dries;s work on the trees.
I have a roadmap in makings, that I will fill in after everyone has placed his or her aims and todos in here.
It will look like http://www.webschuur.com/node/view/136 and should be added in the drupal books.
[Ber | Drupal Services webschuur.com]
My own plans
For 4.6 I am already working on improving the search.module. I've already added significant usability enhancements, as well as sharpened up the indexing behaviour. All in all this looks very promising (check the drupal-devel mailinglist if you're interested).
On a longer term, I'm thinking of taking a second look at the filter administration (the discussion was far from over when input formats hit core, but other issues were more important at the time, after all, the current admin /is/ functional and usable).
I've also been working on a surprise for Drupal.org ;).
One thing I'd like is that for 4.6, we try to actively collaborate more. Right now it's often that some mailing discussion starts, but only one person starts the actual coding of a patch, and only gets small comments right until the end when all development has already been done.
For 4.5, I helped complete the theme system changes and the upload.module, even though I didn't know much about them before. Helping other people out is an easy way to get more intimate with the Drupal base, because you don't have to figure everything out yourself.
If Drupal 4.6 has only half the improvements of 4.5, we'll still have a golden release on our hands ;).
Keyword-highlight
Hi Steven
Thanks for working on the search module. (I only started using Drupal a few weeks ago. I'm just so impressed by the framework!)
Could I, please, submit a feature-patch for the search-module to add themable-keyword-highlighting? Can you give me any pointers as to how to go about this? (I have working code thanks to your clean module!) There are still things like: I'd love to have a different color for each different keyword, but hey, one cannot have everything in one go. Might add it later.
I'm using Drupal 4.6.3 at the moment.
wkr,
Gerke
Themes
I think the lack of Drupal themes is still a major weakness.
The Drupal Theme Garden should help promote what themes we do have, but it would be nice to have more available.
I noticed that Pushbutton has been ported to
Wordpress (kind of an accolade I suppose :-). This got me thinking that what I could do is look at other GNU CMS and port their best templates over to Drupal.
------------------------------------------
Drupal Specialists: Consulting, Development & Training
Robert Castelo, CTO
Code Positive
London, United Kingdom
----
me too
I did Kubrick and plan to port a few more GPL themes. I am waiting for version 1.0 of Manji to be released, and will start doing the conversion.
I am trying to choose themes that are intended to be templates that people can customize quite easily.
Linkdump
I plan to watch, oversee, help with, or do:
http://foo.delocalizedham.com/tmp/plan.txt
http://civicspacelabs.org/developers/proposals/contact
http://civicspacelabs.org/developers/proposals/revisioning
http://civicspacelabs.org/developers/proposals/theme
http://civicspacelabs.org/roadmap/1.0/cms/listing
And maybe a bit of ripping up the node system. Form pre and post.. why not use weights? And take a look at that default workflow page.
form pre/post weighting
see this issue
For me to remember: http://ki
For me to remember: http://kika.trip.ee/images/drupal_tabs_accessrules-183.png
Next step for block config: move the most unusable controls to a separate page, the custom and path columns.
Freshmeat-like sites.
I intend to work on simplifying the task of creating Freshmeat-like sites, i.e. sites which list "projects" (either software or anything else). I need this for two of my own sites, Crazy Hacks and Unmaintained Free Software.
The main work will probably go into flexinode, which is the main module needed for such sites. But also better search facilities and more statistics etc. are things I intend to work on.
Maybe I'll even create a new Drupal-based distribution for this, like CivicSpace or Drupal4Bloggers, we'll see.
Uwe.
--
My Drupal site: http://www.crazy-hacks.org
Soon to be drupalized: http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org
Ahh!! Now I get it.
Okay, I am not sure how I am going to handle distribution to the community. But I will be working on hacking the backend and admin areas to make it easier to have multiple languages without using PO files and such. I don't like hardcoded internationalization. I will be starting a n internationalization community based (hivemindz.com) on drupal and Drupal itself will be the first victim.
I will also be working on getting more PHP5 OOP code into some of the system modules at the same time.
Carl McDade
Information Technology Consult
Team Macromedia
www.heroforhire.net
Maybe you want to discuss you
Maybe you want to discuss your plans for translation in the translations forum? Since we added PO file handling just this upcoming release you might feel a certain resistance to removing them again...
PHP5 and OO are not that popular around here, too. Maybe have a look at the mailing list archive.
--
If you have troubles with a particular contrib project, please consider to file a support request. Thanks.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services
Translations
I don't see the point. Importing a translation takes only a few steps. Furthermore, the translations improve on a daily basis, and people can easily share and synchronize their translations using the import/export-tools. There is no point in taking away this flexibility.
Oh, and there is no 'hardcoded internationalization'. At least, not that I know of. Maybe I misunderstood.
Installation profiles
Creating a 'Drupal distribution' sounds like the next best thing. I wonder why. IMO, Drupal development is best centralized. Either way, I'd hold off such work until we have the 'installation profiles' in place -- better yet, maybe help implement installation profiles first?
Where can I look for previous
Where can I look for previous discussions on this? I need something for CivicSpace 1.0 based on Drupal 4.5.
CivicSpace 0.x has been powered by cvs checkouts, symlinks, link2copy.sh and copy2link.sh (my creations), and a cvs vendor branch. It is less than ideal.
Distributions are not a good idea
IMHO, we should indeed avoid creating distributions, bu since an installation system with profiles will not hit 4.5, and the chance it will be in 4.6 is not 100% for me it was the reason for making one anyway (drupalCOM-alpha). I think I do not have the programming skills to create such a framework myself.
I do not plan to release it, I hope there will be some installation framework before that distribution will become stable :).
I see one big chance for the maintainers of distros though. I want to use my drupalCOM edxperience (and especially the feedback) for creating a good intstallation profile, once there is room for that. I sincerely hope the other distributors will join this club, so that we have some thoroughly tested profiles once they can be used.
[Ber | webschuur.com]
Distributions are good in a sense
Distributions are bad because they tend to lead to some forked work. But they are good for Drupal currently since they are fine experiments on what modifications Drupal needs to handle different needs. The install system will benefit greatly from this experience, if shared.
I needed something like this
I needed something like this so I used the taxonomy_fm module which allows browsing of the taxonomy similar to that of freshmeat.net
You can take to a look at my projects section http://www.heydon.com.au/?q=myprojects and you can download it from my web site at http://www.heydon.com.au/?q=node/114
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Gordon Heydon
My targets.
Right now , I am only targetting the install system for the next release ( i am sounding like a broken record already, *sigh* ).
I am however going to help further refining the theme system, such as for instance integrating menu.module to be used for configuration of the primary/secondary nav , as well as help extend push/pull hybrid methodology in phptemplate (which i will continue improving aswell).
I'd also like to help with i18n work, as localization support only just isn't enough. There needs to be a proper workflow for maintaining content in multiple languages. (South Africa has 11 official languages, FYI).
Something that wasn't mentioned in the pics , is integrating more of the flexinode capabilities into core. (although this is jonbob's baby).
--
The future is so Bryght, I have to wear shades.
All or part of (new) Flexinod
All or part of (new) Flexinode to core is great. Stuff like the form builder it uses is the most needed. And it will bring some of the issues I posted in my initial comment to light.
Adrian, do you have any parts of the installation system working at the moment? Make sure the code is in your CVS sandbox or somewhere. I will be figuring out some install stuff, probably using your code, so I need a place to find it.
I guess I will work on my tas
I guess I will work on my tasks.
And I'd really like to work on a mindmap.module for Drupal. ;)
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If you have troubles with a particular contrib project, please consider to file a support request. Thanks.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services
Mindmap versus book versus galleries versus ...
With some modifications, the book module might make a good mindmap module. After all, both are outliners. What changes would be required?
I have also been thinking about using the book module to manage images. Using the book module we could group images in galleries (book chapters), we'd get gallery-like navigation for free, and using the 'outline'-feature we can easily include stories to go with the images. The idea is certainly appealing to me.
And if the book module would work hand in hand with the menu system, it could be used to setup Drupal sites with a hierarchic structure -- like some corporate or more static Drupal sites already do. We just have to make it more natural to do.
For the book module to work well as a generic outliner it should be made more convenient to work with, and we would have to get rid of the book-related nomenclature. But why not?
Yes, I reached the same concl
Yes, I reached the same conclusion last night. mindmap.module could be a graphical frontend to book.module.
Some features I'd like to add:
Now I need to figure out how to draw mindmaps alike graphics with graphviz. Are there other options?
--
If you have troubles with a particular contrib project, please consider to file a support request. Thanks.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services
I agree with you
I completelly agree with you. I already talk a little about this distinct here but I say it again: taxonomy is for classification, while the book should be the main module in drupal for content organization.
And because in two weeks Drupal will be the main tool in my work to pay my bills, I'm proud to say that I will contribute work to it.
Your battle plan?
What does your personal battle plan look like then? What exactly do you plan to contribute?
As result of my work
My "plan" result of the need to provide a solution to my customers. So what I'll be contributing are mainly guidelines, but also code if I need to provide specific functions to them that would be usefull to the community:
* Guidelines for content organization. Seems easy to organize content, but it always a difficult question on what and how modules to use.
* In the sequence of the first a list of the "best" modules will appear...
* Analyses of modules, needed features, bugs found
* Contribute new modules and/or code to modules that I'll use but that are not maintained
I don't know if this sound a plan to you... to me, will just be a consequence of my work.
Menu, Node Access, Flexinode
My action items are:
- Unify the menu administration with "links management" like the top navigation area in themes.
- Allow better personalization of the custom menus, by for example making them respect permissions so different users can see different custom items.
- Work with forum experts to get the node access API to the point where we can have true private forums.
- Revamp Flexinode substantially. I am working on a completely separate road map for that project, which I will post on the forums when it's ready.
Interesting items
Interesting items.
Both features are related: 'private forums' is about who get to view forum topics in a forum, and 'forum moderators' is about who get to edit forums topics in a particular forum. Maybe the GUI changes could take advantage of the pending forum configuration patch?
if the permission system also
if the permission system also made it possible for the threads in a forum to only be visible to the threadstarter & the moderators the drupal forums could also be used as a flixible inhouse helpdesksystem.
we will be looking into adding this and some sort of linking each thread with the threadstarters hw & sw information.
:water
Private Forums
I'm surprised that true private forums are not fully integrated into the core and tested yet.
Documentation and Simple block ordering
I have never contributed code yet, but am planning to document two aspects:
1. Modifying profile module.
2. HTML widgets used by Drupal.
Am planning to use Drupal as a platform for two different community applications - both requiring changes to profile module.
Also, I had some plans to work on block reordering. My plan was to implement it with primarily Javascript. If Javascript is disabled in the browser, then the present method of reordering will always be present.
I can write down the plan for block ordering, if that can help others make out if it is worth the effort. I am sure many others also plan to rework on it.
-----------
Sandip Bhattacharya
http://www.sandipb.net
ordering
since block ordering is an admin only function, i think its ok in its current state using weights.
book.module on the other hand exposes weights to the end user which is pushing the iit of usability. its OK, but could be better. And you, I think some ECMAscript (the proper name for javascript) will help here. Remember folks, ECMAscript is an open standard.
Javascript
I think some Javascript would be great for the menus. It could save an incredible number of meaningless hits -processor time, bandwith- having javascript enabled menus, but for nothing else. Please, let the main pages javascript-free.
ECMAscript is an open standard
Yes, but... does Internet Explorer know that?
https://reyero.net
Different approach to Blogs, Node access and Ratings module
I've been working for a while on transfering my backpackers hostel from a static site to a drupal based one, in order to add more functiopnality.
Some of our needs are group blogs, named blogs, general access blogs, etc. This requires some changes to the blog module, an implementation of an access module and a new rating module.
Cheers,
Dror
I am almost finished modifing
I am almost finished modifing the 4.4 taxonomy.module so that multiple terms can be posted once each term is on a new line.
Once it works I'll add it to the latest CVS.
To learn more read: http://drupal.org/node/11458#comment-18131
Marcel
http://01wholesale.com
Donations
My 'battle plan' is all about supporting Drupal 4.6 and all it's future versions in relation to donations. I am working hard on getting a new service up and running (based on Drupal). A more official post about this service will be made some other time. Basically Donorge wants new and more effective donation powers to become a reality for reasons and interests going beyond software alone. Realizing this so far has been possible for me to do thanks to (most importantly) Drupal. I look forward to helping Drupal with donations, I look forward to helping anyone with donations and I look forward to helping evolve the general shared interest behind donations.
i18n and translations
I am already working in adding multilingual content to Drupal but more than a separated module -which is the experience of i18n-, it will be a management module + a set of patches to core or to some core modules
The main points are:
1. Add languages to nodes and then create some patches for the node.module to select the appropiate node list in each case for each language.
2. Add languages to taxonomy, similar idea
3. Integration with the locale module to provide language selection for anonymous users
4. Create a translation module which will take care of all of the workflow of translations
5. Other modules and functionality will be or not multi-language aware. I aim to provide some implementation which won't interfere at all with other modules
I will be reusing some code from i18n module, but the whole thing will be a completely different approach, so I don't know yet whether to update the i18n module to be the management module for multilingual content while keeping some backward compatibility or to create a new one from scratch.
The language will be definitely kept in the url as it provides some advantages for links, search engines, etc... The browser language and/or user language will be used only for the first page but from that point on, it will be added to the url, as it is the only way to allow incoming links to work properly.
The multiple-table approach -currently implemented in i18n- will be kept as an option but won't be a 'must' to have multilingual content. I mean, for instance: if the 'statistics' module is not yet language-aware, but you want to have separated statistics for each language, ok, you can duplicate statistics tables for each language and i18n system will take care of it...
About the integration with locale, it will mean to override the locale language when i18n is active, and using locale's language configuration. For the moment -but hopefully not for ever :-) -, i18n will rely on the locale module for interface translation and language configuration... I think the current localization system does its work but it is out of date and should be reworked some day.
There's also an issue with some language dependent variables -like welcome e-mail...- that currently are run through the localization system. That is not *interface*, it is *content* and should be translated some other way. If you translate them with the locale module and you change the english one, it all is broken. The current i18n module implementation provides a feature named 'language dependent variables' which takes care of it and I plan to keep it for the future, maybe adding some interface for maintaining them.
About the patches to core, as I've realized there's some interest in having multilanguage but it is not considered a *Drupal must have* feature by many people, I will make an effort to provide them as an step-by-step option. I mean... small patch that provides multilingual nodes... small patch that provides multilingual taxonomy... etc...
Whether they get into core or not... well... we'll see. But for me this feature is something I desperately need to offer to most of my clients so I will be doing it anyway. It is this or going to other CMS :-(. And I have *no* interest at all all in maintaining it as a completely separated module plenty of ugly hacks which I will be needing anyway for most of my sites.
https://reyero.net
rewrite approach
Hi guys,
I have gone a long way of implementing "query rewriting approach" of i18n, BEFORE I discovered that it can not be succesful :) :| respectively
Rewrite alone is not as difficult as you might think, but what is a really bad in this is the loss of a context - that means, I can rewrite columns in the query to reflect language settings, but it is not enough.
Imagine that some modules do updates in this way:
1.delete the row
2.insert the row with new data
I could never catch this, I do not know the context of a query - oh, yes, sure you are right, I should have discovered it earlier.
just to show that I am not only talking, you may try what I have done until now, I believe it is 90% complete
add this into you index.php:
include_once "includes/i2.inc";
and this to your database.mysql.inc, oh yes, should I forget to mention that it is only for mysql?
if(function_exists("i2_check_query")) {
$myquery = i2_check_query($query);
}
the source: www.knihovnabbb.cz/tmp/i2.inc.txt
but it is of no use at all
cheers
roman
Accessibility
Given the attention that Drupal has been paying to standards compliance (and to a limited extent even to accessibility issues as defined by the W3C WCAG 1.0), I'd be interested in starting (or collaborating to, if I missed a thread, which is likely enough given the sheer amount of info) a full blown accessibiility effort, which should complement nicely the usability trend which is going mainstream with 4.6.
Please note that US Section 508 compliance and / or validator compliance (think Bobby) sported (for example) by Pushbutton are more than a good start but not enough, since local governments could require extended, different or stricter rulesets. For example, the EU goes for a broader scope approach, and Italy's regulation on the subject, currently being discussed in its technical implementation after the Accessibility Act was issued Jan 2004, is expected to mix in ISO, WCAG and Section 508 suggestions.
What is needed is probably a mixture of documentation specifically geared towards 'what you need to change and where if you have to implement a specific accessibility feature', and a few / some tweakings code-wise (the
tag comes to mind. 'alt' texts should be forced, as they are a requirement, and they should obey some common sense rules): right now I do not know enough of Drupal's inner workings to have a formal opinion, but judging by the general quality of the project it seems unlikely to me that big changes to the engine would be involved in such modifications.
--
resmini [vector at exea dot it]
SQLite layer
As PHP5 comes with SQLite bundled, I think it would be good. It is known that ALTER TABLE and SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT()) support is missing. ALTER TABLE is already implemented by Jon Jensen, the process as ugly as it could be, but it's needed very rarely. SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT()) is already implemented by me, that's only one preg_replace, the regexp not difficult at all.
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Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.
There was a discussion previously on this
Most of the participants in it were not favorable of the idea.
http://drupal.org/node/6448
If their concerns (mainly what you listed above) can be addressed, I see SQLite as a good feature to have.
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Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba
poll.module
Poll.module is in desparate need of some attention. There have been some interesting bug reports and feature requests over the past couple of months. I plan to tackle a number of these.
I agree with you
I agree completely with you. Mainly, it's needed a capacity for the user to change it's own vote, if he changes his mind. This is useful particularly when the vote is used to take a decision based in a continuous discussion.
Miguel Duarte
Webmaster of: Lisbon Guide & Love Poems
my plans are
to make additional functionality to Drupal, I think this must not be in core:
* more functional forum, which will allows postings on any node type to it and have advanced moderation panel (separate module). Work started as AkvaForum project (see sandbox/axel/akvaforum)
* wikiwiki, with features for integration other site content (multiple node binding to wiki - analogy with Book.module). Work started as WaterWiki project (see sandbox/axel/waterwiki)
Though I don't know how many time take this work.
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Axel,
Russian Drupal Community