This page last changed on Nov 19, 2006 by cmiller.

Some wiki software allows the editing of sections within a page (sectional editing). This functionality is currently not available in Confluence, but we are looking to include it in a future release. This issue is being tracked on the Confluence JIRA project: CONF-5913.

In the meantime, for pages that are getting long enough to be hard to edit in a single block, you can get an approximation of sectional editing by using the {include} macro. For example:

h3. [Section One] ([edit|///pages/editpage.action?spaceKey=SPACE&pageTitle=Section One])

{include:Section One}

h3. [Section Two] ([edit|///pages/editpage.action?spaceKey=SPACE&pageTitle=Section Two])

{include:Section Two}

The links to the edit pages can be simplified by using the {link-to:page edit} macro available in David Peterson's Linking Plugin.

Technical Stuff

The problem lies in the complexity of Confluence's wiki markup. We made a couple of proof-of-concept implementations of sectional editing as part of our "Fedex Day" program, and while it's quite easy to come up with a solution that works with 90% of pages, there are a lot of edge-cases where it's actually quite hard to determine precisely where a given section starts and finishes.

Next time we perform a significant overhaul of our wiki markup processing engine, we'll be looking specifically to add functionality that will make sectional editing work properly.

I would have thought that you could just look for the next section heading of the same level as the start and stop parts of editing a page. Are you able to provide an example of a case that does not work?

Posted by kustere at Nov 19, 2006 19:15

If you're just parsing the wiki-markup, the page above contains a section heading (h3.) inside a macro that makes it not be rendered as a heading. (And since macros can be provided by third-parties, there's no real way of telling what they'll produce).

If you're parsing the resulting HTML, a macro may produce a header-tag that looks like a section boundary, but isn't.

You can embed headers inside tables and lists.

None of these are insurmountable problems, but they combine to make it harder than just "looking for the next heading".

Posted by cmiller at Nov 19, 2006 19:37

As an intermediate solution, you can look at the sub-section macro.

Posted by dhardiker@adaptavist.com at Nov 20, 2006 05:18

the {edit-include} user macro gives an approximation you may choose to use in your site.

Posted by jamesmortimer at Nov 28, 2006 09:40

You can also use the include all child pages method with similar effect to edit-include.

Posted by david@randombits.org at Jan 08, 2007 04:22
Document generated by Confluence on Mar 22, 2007 20:59