Roadmap

First version : basic editability

This will a first draft of a GUI, allowing basic content edition capabilities based on the contenteditable HTML5 property and on RDF semantics. DocPad outputs content with such semantics, using semantic properties to distinguish documents and their content and metadata. In the example below, typeof="soic:post" and about="/blog/2012-01-09-2011-in-recap.html" identify the piece of content to edit and property="dc:title" and property="dc:date" are document's metadata.

<nav class="document-list" typeof="dc:collection">
  <li class="document" typeof="soic:post" about="/blog/2012-01-09-2011-in-recap.html">
    <h3>
      <a class="document-link" href="/blog/2012-01-09-2011-in-recap.html"><strong class="document-title" property="dc:title">2011
        in Recap</strong>
        <small class="document-date" property="dc:date">Jan 09 2012</small>
      </a>
    </h3>
  </li>
  <li class="document" typeof="soic:post" about="/blog/2011-06-26-contributor-friendly.html">
    ...
  </li>  
</nav>

The semantics link the final output and the source file, so it's possible to precisely change source files.

To achieve this, those plugins needs works and updating to the latest version of DocPad :

• rest plugin
• admin plugin
• authenticate plugin

And the text plugin will output the HTML with the semantics.

Another requirement is the differential rendering, so that DocPad generate only files that have changed. Work is underway to achieve this.

With the plugins ready, the idea is that the docpad-gui could work as follows : if the website is on localhost:9778, the gui should be on localhost:9779 and load in the localhost:9778 website within an iframe, this allows for us to never mess with the html of the website or have conflicts with styling etc. It also allows us to refresh and change the iframe as needed, e.g. the live preview mode.

Second version

This version will depend on the achievements of first version, and feedback from people using it. Ideas :

• editing source of files (anywhere on site)
• query-engine to filter files
• editing docpad.cson file (the site configuration file)

Third version

The content of the third version is hypothetical, feedback will prevail on the features to add. Ideas :

• media uploads and management
• image editing
• cloud support
• git pushing
• syncing between locations
• the todo list could go forever