> I would prefer MediaWiki for reasons outlined in my previous email as > well as it having a reasonable API for making remote changes and a > (incomplete) common lisp api wrapper library to use it. This would > enable some amount of automated scripting of content from old ALU wiki > to new ALUMediaWiki.
This is probably time for me to speak up, as I work for Atlassian and have spent a couple of years supporting Confluence; I've since moved into the sysadmin team, where I really belong. Oddly enough, I've replaced another Lisp fan who moved into yet another team. Confluence does have a reasonable API for making remote changes; it's currently implemented via SOAP/XML-RPC, but there's work underway to replace that with a REST API. Either of these isn't too hard to handle in Lisp; I know this from experience :) The most efficient exposition of what the API can (and can't) do would be effected by pointing to the documentation: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Remote+API+Specification As for importing/converting existing content, there's the Universal Wiki Converter plugin: https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/213 However, I gather the current remnants of the ALU Wiki aren't necessarily in a form that one might call a functioning Wiki. There's also a Converter plugin which simply converts content from other wiki formats: https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/14575 The UWC is unsupported but known to work pretty well in most cases, though I see it hasn't been confirmed to work well with the latest release. I've never heard of the Converter plugin before now, so have no idea how well it works, but I can at least wave the flag and say that it's there :) I'd also be happy enough to take the existing content and set to work on converting/importing it to a Confluence space. I don't know how closely Clojure could interact with the Confluence runtime, but I've had some minor success in using Rhino to drive Java classes from within Javascript - I personally find Java itself too frustrating for words, so it was a relief to find something lispy to work with. The developers know where I stand, don't worry :) Getting a non-profit/community license shouldn't be hard. There appears to be a link missing from the relevant section of the site, so I'll ping the relevant team and check on the exact conditions. I think Mike and Scott would get a kick out of a Lisp community using their product, so I don't see much of a problem there. I'll also rebut the suggestion of a "standard" wiki markup: there's been some vigorous discussion within the Confluence team on this subject, accompanied by a reasonable amount of investigation, and the short version is that there _isn't_ a standard markup. There are points of similarity between this one and that one, but nothing that's universal. A couple of useful sales points on Confluence: - you can use spaces to divide the content: one space for projects, one for documentation, one for the Road to Lisp survey... - the social aspect has benefited from quite a bit of work recently, though it's long had features like blogging, and discussions attached to specific pages - permissions/restrictions are bloody handy for working on a draft version of a page, while keeping it from public eyes until it's in suitable form. We do this constantly, internally. - not only _can_ it use PostgreSQL for its backend, but that's what we use internally, and what we primarily develop and test against. You can use a variety of other DBMSes if you must, of course. As for somebody in the Lisp community having an interest in writing wiki software of their own, well, an obvious conflict of interest means that I really need to keep my mouth shut on this subject without first having a careful chat with Management. However, I'll concede that the phrase, "how hard can it be?" has passed my lips :) All of this is intended as helpful information, rather than a sales pitch - I'm trying to tread the fine line between the two, and it would feel unfair to withhold information that I can easily share. If MediaWiki is the choice, and it's hardly a bad one, I promise sincerely not to pout or stamp my little feet. Cheers, James _______________________________________________ Gardeners mailing list [email protected] http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners
