Editor: iejs dropdown control containing all topics of current web?

Background

In TWiki, there used to be a skin with an iejs editor. It was removed in 2006 because it was buggy, but it had one very neat feature that I'd like to re-create: One of the controls in the formatting toolbar was a dropdown control that contains all topics of the current web, and when the user selects one, that topic is inserted into the text at the current cursor position. That has two advantages: First, users don't need to memorize the exact name and spelling of all topics, and second, the overall quality of the wiki improves when the internal linking is easier to do and therefore more often done.

I want to re-create the functionality of that dropdown control. (I'm aware that this feature becomes impractical when the web contains > ~200 topics, so a parameter would be needed to turn the feature off.)

Question

I need to get the list of topics into the editor's javascript somehow, but how?

-- TorbenGB - 30 Apr 2010

Answer (partial)

I found the old iejs code here. Here's the relevant bit that needs to be put into PatternSkin's editor:

<select name="topic" onchange="insert(this.options [this.selectedIndex].value);this.options [0].selected = true" class="editDropdown">
<option value="">Topic ...</option>
%TOPICLIST{"<option value=$qname>$name</option>" separator=" "}%
</select>

The next step is to find the relevant parts of the TinyMCEPlugin editor...

Perhaps this new iejs should be implemented as a new plugin, see http://wiki.moxiecode.com/index.php/TinyMCE:Create_plugin/3.x

It should be possible to disable the dropdown control by using a preference variable in TinyMCEPlugin#Preferences.

-- TorbenGB - 30 Apr 2010

If you don't care about WYSIWYG editing, you could also use SmartEditContrib which uses auto-complete for generating links to other topics.

-- MartinKaufmann - 30 Apr 2010

We had TinyMCEUsabilityPlugin created by EugenMayer for TinyMCE 2.x. It provided a dialogue with AJAX-enabled search-as-you-type link insertion. I started a port to 3.2.7, but ended up re-doing it slightly differently, and then never finished.

It's a type-as-you-filter-search dialogue again, but implemented with JQuery modal dialogue whose content is fed through an ordinary AjaxHelper topic with a few radio buttons to choose scope (this web, this web + subwebs, all webs, all webs + subwebs).

I think this is the best route forward. I'd like the Foswiki 2.0 skin to include something similar, but not with a modal dialogue.

-- PaulHarvey - 30 Apr 2010

Thank you Martin and Paul for your inputs. My idea of a little addition to the editor turns out to be not so simple, so I've decided to put it on "the list"; there are other matters with higher priority right now. But hey - now we've got the details logged.

-- TorbenGB - 04 May 2010