Foswiki Release 1.0.0 - BETA 1, 06:12:57 02 January 2009
Introduction
Foswiki Release 1.0.0 - Beta 3.
Note this is the second beta release of Foswiki 1.0.0. It is not recommended for production use
Beta 1 had a couple of severe bugs and one security issue (A newly registered user had his password copied to his home page). Therefore this beta 2 so shortly after.
Beta 2 was subject to a lot of testing in Windows environment. Beta 3 is therefore a good step for Windows users.
The purpose of this beta is
- Give translators a platform to test their work on.
- Give developers a chance to see a real installation built and installed
- Give extension developers a platform to develop the Foswiki versions of extensions
- Give our users a chance to practice the upgrade from TWiki to Foswiki before the real release
The release of Foswiki 1.0.0 is planned for 03 Jan 2009 but likely to happen around the 9th as the beta testing revealed many issues on Windows.
The quality of 1.0.0 is depending on
you downloading and installing this beta and report back problems to the development team.
Foswiki - The Free and Open Source Wiki
Foswiki is an enterprise collaboration and information sharing tool targetted for professionel use in anything from small businesses to large organisations.
Foswiki is a wiki. A "Wiki" system is fundamentally a website with editable web pages. It looks like a normal web site... except that it encourages contribution and editing of pages, questions, answers, comments and updates. It's a powerful way of communicating asynchronously over the web for many existing intranet and public internet sites. Foswiki is simple to learn and use. It aims to provide a transparent way for you to publish and exchange your ideas with others over the web and eliminates the one-webmaster syndrome of outdated intranet content.
It is a Structured Wiki with tools that enables users without programming skills to build powerful yet simple applications to process information and build workflows. Developers can extend the functionality of Foswiki with plugins.
Foswiki is the old TWiki project under a new name. Developers decided to discard the TWiki brand because of a commercial dispute and continue the project under the new name Foswiki. The old TWiki project is defacto not actively developed any longer, and it is questionable if the project will survive without the open source community behind it. Foswiki is backwards compatible all content from older TWiki installations. Foswiki 1.0.0 ships in a version with TWikiCompatibilityPlugin pre-installed. This plugin makes most extensions made for TWiki work under Foswiki.
Foswiki is released under the GNU General Public License.
Pre-installed Extensions
Foswiki 1.0.0 is shipped with
- Plugins: CommentPlugin, EditTablePlugin, EmptyPlugin, InterwikiPlugin, PreferencesPlugin, RenderListPlugin, SlideShowPlugin, SmiliesPlugin, SpreadSheetPlugin, TablePlugin, TinyMCEPlugin, TwistyPlugin, WysiwygPlugin
- Contribs: BehaviourContrib, JSCalendarContrib, MailerContrib, TipsContrib, TopicUserMappingContrib
- Skins: PatternSkin
- Compatibility version - TWikiCompatibilityPlugin
New Features Highlights
- The Foswiki 1.0.0 is built on a new platform called Foswiki Stand Alone which enables more optimized functionality in mod_perl and the like. It also enables making features like running Foswiki without a webserver locally. These new features are not yet available but they will soon and by running Foswiki 1.0.0 you are already ready for them when they because available for download.
- The PatternSkin has been facelifted. If you go to the PatternSkin topic you can select different themes. You can choose which side you want the side bar, you can add a frame around the whole content, and there is a TWiki theme which makes it easier for the upgrader as it maintains the dimentions of top bar etc.
- Advanced Search screen now has query type search
- New section type "expandvariables" adds better control over macro expansion in topic templates. You can now create template topics with sections within which all macros are expanded.
- New "Copy topic" feature in the "More topic actions" tools.
- IF conditions has been expanded with new "isempty" test condition
Security Updates
Foswiki is much more secure than TWiki 4.2.4.
- The Foswiki 1.0.0 has chosen to secure by default the powerful but also vulnerable URLPARAM macro against cross site scripting (XSS) attacks. URLPARAM now by default encodes a short list of unsafe characters
'"<>%
which eliminates most XSS possibilities within normal use of URLPARAM. This means that not only the distributed topics but also your existing topics are better protected against XSS.
- Functions QUERYPARAMS, ORIGURL (skin macro) are secured against XSS attacks. QUERYPARAMS like URLPARAM is now encoding with the new "safe" type encoding.
- Print preview link is no longer an XSS attack vector.
- A developer security audit of the code revealed quite many both severe and less severe possibilities to inject code into the running old TWiki code. Foswiki has rewritten all code that takes data from outside so that it is checked and filtered for safe execution. Much more rigorous taint checking is now applied to all variables. As the Foswiki code is already a major rewrite it has not been practically possible for the Foswiki project to feed patches back to the TWiki code. TWiki users are for security reasons adviced to upgrade to Foswiki as soon as possible, as we have not seen any attempt from the TWiki.net company to even start porting our fixes back into their old TWiki code base. None of the known attack vectors has or will be exposed to the public. They are all found and fixed inside the Foswiki core development team.
Major changes caused by name change from TWiki to Foswiki
Because TWiki brandname is legally owned by Peter Thoeny we have felt it necessary to eliminate the TWiki word everywhere. It has also been an opportunity to change some of the naming that caused confusement for the end users.
- The TWiki web is now called System
- The %TWIKIWEB% and %MAINWEB% variables are now called %SYSTEMWEB% and %USERSWEB%
- System distributed topics have been renamed to eliminate the TWiki word and to make the text more readable (e.g Plugins, Skins etc)
- All CSS and Javascript names have been changed from twikiXxxxx to foswikiXxxxx
- All templates starting with twiki now starts with foswiki
The TWikiCompatibilityPlugin has been created to help the upgrader so that links to the old topics do not appear broken and so most Plugins made for TWiki 4.2 also works in Foswiki 1.0.0.
As part of the fork the Foswiki community is evaluating all the 100s of extensions that are available for TWiki. All that are working are ported over to the Foswiki name space. Many of them are being bug fixed in the process. Effectively you will have more working plugins available for Foswiki than you had for TWiki. The most popular plugins are already ported and more are added every day.
Terminology Changes
As the TWiki brand name was part of the terminology the Foswiki project had to review and change terminology. While doing that we also took the opportunity to change some of the terminology that is known to cause confusion among end users.
TWiki term |
Foswiki term |
TWiki variable |
Macro |
preference(s) variable |
preference setting, or macro when referring to expansion of same |
TWiki form |
Data form |
TWiki Plugin |
Plugin |
TWiki Template |
Skin Template |
Topic Template |
Template Topic |
TWiki Markup Language (TML) |
Topic Markup Language (TML) |
TWiki Application |
Wiki Application |
Topic names changed in System web (former TWiki web)
Old name |
New name |
ATasteOfTWiki |
BeginnersStartHere |
TWikiAccessControl |
AccessControl |
TWikiAddOns |
ContributedAddOns |
TWikiContribs |
Contribs |
TWikiContributor |
ProjectContributor |
TWikiCss |
CascadingStyleSheets |
TWikiDocGraphics |
DocumentGraphics |
TWikiDocumentation |
CompleteDocumentation |
TWikiDownload |
DownloadSources |
TWikiEditingShorthand |
EditingShorthand |
TWikiEnhancementRequests |
EnhancementRequests |
TWikiFaqTemplate |
FaqTemplate |
TWikiFAQ |
FrequentlyAskedQuestions |
TWikiForms |
DataForms |
TWikiGlossary |
GlossaryOfTerms |
TWikiHistory |
ReleaseHistory |
TWikiInstallationGuide |
InstallationGuide |
TWikiJavascripts |
JavascriptFiles |
TWikiLogos |
ProjectLogos |
TWikiMetaData |
MetaData |
TWikiPlugins |
Plugins |
TWikiPreferences |
DefaultPreferences |
TWikiReferenceManual |
ReferenceManual |
TWikiRegistration |
UserRegistration |
TWikiReleaseNotes04x02 |
ReleaseNotes01x00 |
TWikiRenderingShortcut |
RenderingShortcut |
TWikiScripts |
CommandAndCGIScripts |
TWikiShorthand |
ShortHand |
TWikiSiteTools |
SiteTools |
TWikiSkinBrowser |
SkinBrowser |
TWikiSkins |
Skins |
TWikiSystemRequirements |
SystemRequirements |
TWikiTemplates |
SkinTemplates |
TWikiTemplates |
TemplateTopics |
TWikiTopics |
TopicsAndWebs |
TWikiTutorial |
TwentyMinuteTutorial |
TWikiUpgradeGuide |
UpgradeGuide |
TWikiUserAuthentication |
UserAuthentication |
TWikiUsersGuide |
UsersGuide |
TWikiVariablesQuickStart |
MacrosQuickStart |
TWikiVariables |
Macros |
TWikiWebsTable |
WebsTable |
TWikiRegistrationAgent |
RegistrationAgent |
TWikiPlannedFeatures, TWikiReleaseNotes04x00, TWikiSite, and WhatDoesTWikiStandFor have been removed.
Topic names changed in System web (former TWiki web)
Old name |
New name |
TWikiAdminGroup |
AdminGroup |
TWikiGroupTemplate |
GroupTemplate |
TWikiPreferences |
SitePreferences |
TWikiGroups |
WikiGroups |
TWikiContributor |
ProjectContributor |
TWikiUsers |
WikiUsers |
TWikiGuest |
WikiGuest |
TWikiRegistrationAgent |
RegistrationAgent |
TWikiAdminUser |
AdminUser |
Note that the change from TWikiAdminGroup to AdminGroup has no practical implication when upgrading from TWiki to Foswiki. The topics with an ALLOW setting set to TWikiAdminGroup will still prevent users from accessing or editing and the AdminGroup members can edit anything. You must however make sure the TWikiAdminGroup topic exists in the Main web and that it is protected against editing. Simply make sure it iw copied over from old Main web along with all other user and group topics.
When you upgrade from TWiki copy the old TWikiUsers topic to WikiUsers and manually add the AdminUser, ProjectContributor, and RegistrationAgent.
Your old Main.TWikiPreferences settings must be copied to the new Main.SitePreferences topic.
Important Changes since TWiki 4.2.3
If this release had been a TWiki release it would have been 4.3.0
Since the fork of Foswiki happened while TWiki 4.2.3 was the current release, we list all changes since this release below.
Fixes
Item109 |
Rename all topics that have the T-word in them |
Item110 |
Replace all occurences of %TWIKIWEB% in core, docs and default plugins with System |
Item113 |
Rebrand css classes from twikiXxxxx to foswikiXxxxxx |
Item115 |
Delete ClassicSkin |
Item116 |
Rebrand javascript classes |
Item124 |
undefined ICONTOPIC causes crash |
Item125 |
Search error 'grep for \btest\b failed.. |
Item128 |
Error in oopsmore |
Item136 |
remove pattern skin css classes from default skin - replace with twiki* ready for re-brand |
Item137 |
Register show user's a failure when sendmail returns non-zero |
Item168 |
Review all SEARCH statements in the docco & convert to query or more contemporary TML |
Item191 |
remove the stupid kids from pattern skin |
Item203 |
Rebrand the TipsContrib |
Item205 |
Replace all TWiki webnames to System |
Item206 |
Linking to Supplemental Documents |
Item212 |
stop url(http://... something.png) from being made into a html link, so inline images in css style isn't terminal |
Item217 |
Replace module/plugin of message at the top of source files |
Item218 |
Change the links in plugins to foswiki.org |
Item221 |
Change Interwiki links in docs to Foswiki |
Item230 |
lib/CPAN/lib missing in INC path |
Item244 |
nonwikiword is never really checked |
Item2525 |
TablePlugin produces bad links for sorting when using "short" URLs |
Item254 |
add -Autoconf to pseudo-install.pl |
Item264 |
Rebrand pattern skin |
Item265 |
Rebranding EditTablePlugin for Foswiki |
Item267 |
Update file table in plugins that contains TWiki directories |
Item273 |
Rename twiki.tmpl -> foswiki.tmpl |
Item295 |
Replacing TWiki with Foswiki in core docs and default plugins |
Item297 |
viewfile can't be used as a dropin replacement for {pubUrl}, and when viewfile fails it redirects to an oops mess |
Item300 |
Rebranding root-level documentation |
Item308 |
Preview renders a zero byte page when topic uses a view_template |
Item309 |
Checkpoint save fotgets edit_template |
Item312 |
Main.UserForm does not override TWiki.UserForm |
Item314 |
Potential inadvertant linking on registration completion page |
Item318 |
if you have a trailing / on your url, foswiki assumes all preceeding parts of the URL are webnames |
Item319 |
Rewrite all SEARCH's in the distributed topics to use querySearch |
Item327 |
Rebranding TablePlugin |
Item328 |
Rebranding SmiliesPlugin for Foswiki |
Item347 |
Rebranding SpreadSheetPlugin |
Item367 |
Rebranding RenderListPlugin |
Item370 |
Replace the favicon to Foswiki - and make the default setting come from System.ProjectLogos |
Item375 |
Eliminate use of URLPARAM in docs so it becomes an XSS trap |
Item384 |
Improve function getElementsByClassName |
Item385 |
Improve layout attachment button and form header. Add attachment counter |
Item391 |
QUERYPARAMSTRING and TOC only url encodes parameter values but not the names |
Item393 |
Add default safe encoding for QUERYPARAMS and add "safe" type to ENCODE |
Item401 |
OSX fails unit tests - notably UTF8 seg faults. |
Item405 |
ORIGURL used in template login used for example for reset password is an XSS attach vector |
Item406 |
WebSearch does not work with quoted word strings. |
Item407 |
WebRss and Atom search does not work with quotes words |
Item417 |
Undefined subroutine &Foswiki::Users:: ApacheHtpasswdUser::ListIterator called |
Item418 |
Rebranding SlideShowPlugin |
Item41 |
Remove the duplicate TAG topics - like VarREVINFO and VarREVINFO2 |
Item444 |
Adding a anchor "foswikiTOC" for the TOC to be able to jump up to it |
Item4463 |
Template Path is wrong for Skin customization using topics |
Item462 |
Improved user interface and interaction on the topic that is shown when a topic does not exist |
Item471 |
WebSearch and WebSearchAdvanced keep moveing the user to the TWiki web, rather than staying where the users asked to be |
Item474 |
PreferencesPlugin does not understand Local |
Item4868 |
Bulk Register fails if Main web is Set ALLOWWEBCHANGE = TWikiAdminGroup |
Item486 |
Beginners start here has obsolete content |
Item4906 |
Filename of attachments containing a wikiword inside ( ) messes up the file attachment table and other UI |
Item491 |
UserListByPhotograph moved to Image Gallery plugin |
Item5006 |
Interwiki rule: change Bugs: to Foswikitask:, and Rev: to Foswikirev: |
Item509 |
Remove un-needed pub/WebPreferences/logo.gif files which are not used and still TWiki logos |
Item510 |
Wysiwyg editor takes the background colour for the html body for the editor instead of applying a white background. |
Item511 |
Twisty on login screen creates slightly invalid markup |
Item5176 |
%SCRIPTSUFFIX is added twice in TOC links |
Item529 |
fix_local_links needs to point to foswiki.org |
Item5350 |
NONWIKIWORDFLAG is not resolved |
Item5351 |
WebCreateNewTopic filters out international characters |
Item541 |
calling search bin with no empty search string results in white screen instead of response |
Item5637 |
Move languages.cache to Working where webserver has permission to write so we can leave Locales read only |
Item567 |
LoginManager not working with IP matching because of code error in Foswiki's interface to CGI::Session |
Item569 |
ENCODE turns the value 0 into empty string '' |
Item570 |
SPACEOUT fails if value or separator are the string 0 |
Item5848 |
Number of topics resulting from 2 SEARCH's onthe same topic seems in error (and seems to be duplicated too. |
Item5852 |
Split out operators into seperate modules, so that extensions can plug in new operators. |
Item5859 |
Plugin does not work if using NTLM |
Item5900 |
PatternSkinCustomization and WysiwygPlugin still mention kupu and COMPOSER |
Item5910 |
%TOC variable creates links with unnecessary query string |
Item5914 |
TWiki::Request::url() must support -rewrite , -absolute and -relative |
Item5922 |
$formfield data not being displayed in formatted searches |
Item5926 |
Topics with Chinese in UTF8 destroys page view in Internet Explorer |
Item5937 |
move initialization of SwitchBoard to TWiki.spec |
Item5939 |
Rogue below |