On Fri, 2007-05-25 at 06:27 -0700, Paul Monday wrote: > These are the same ranges of responses I get when I ask myself about this > problem! The gap in the MediaWiki to DocBook is large, but Christopher, it > is good to see there is some ability to convert. I will take a look at your > source and see if we can contribute :-) I'm guessing its GPL?! > It's actually not my source, but Magnus Manske's. He released under GPL, you can see his README on that page, where it is described. > And to Brian's point, I agree that there would be a "cutoff" date where > MediaWiki wouldn't facilitate us anymore, wiki text is far less expressive > for formal "publishing" on paper. > > Further, unfortunately, the world isn't ready for fully online documentation. > Many cultures still hold onto the paper book concept as a master and a must > have. With Wiki's, I've run into a few problems myself: > - Having to be online / connected to read and edit (I'm used to working on > specs on a plane and Wiki's make this difficult) > - The ever-wonderful "how do I print this thing" problem (can be somewhat > fixed by a deep linking formatter, but the problem is more difficult than > this) > - The "how do I send this to someone that doesn't have access to the Wiki" > problem Michelle had expressed some desires to have exportable wiki content from the OpenSolaris wiki project (to pdf, docbook, etc). As I understand it, it's one of the objectives after a wiki-engine is chosen, after integration/linking with the user database of course. Perhaps if formatting is lacking, something could be done about that.
Several discussions about wiki vs docbook (especially mediawiki) have been done in communities in the past, you might want to check out the blender archives, or just google "mediawiki vs docbook" to see the end decisions.. For me, this type of stuff doesn't sound like huge issues, just need to be cleverly handled. If your wiki page has an "export to ..." link, I don't think it would be too difficult to save, print, or send to someone without wiki experience. It's not a gap, it's just seam that's yet to be stitched. Regards, Christopher
