Subject:
Re: Wikipedia articles on the LDP
From:
David Merrill ####@####.####
Date:
27 Jan 2002 07:40:18 -0000
Message-Id: <20020127083130.GB29010@lupercalia.net>
On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 10:10:34PM -0500, David Merrill wrote:
> I want to start mirroring some relevant Wikipedia articles on the LDP.
> While the LDP has a pretty good (and growing!) collection of HOWTOs
> and Guides about the technical issues, we have very little content
> about the larger concepts. These articles would help fill in the gaps.
> And as a nice bonus, they are already all well maintained and getting
> better every day. We have Wikipedia's blessing to use them.
It's been three days, and no response. I don't know how to interpret
that. Does nobody care, or does silence mean agreement?
The organic nature of the LDP as an organization means I try always to
get consensus from the major contributors before I do anything major
that would affect the site. So I really want to hear from you. Please.
Here's the gameplan I'm pursuing. I hope to have lots of new authors
come on board who will want to use the WikiText editing method,
because it is so very accessible and easy. But it also has some real
positive advantages, as well as some capabilities, that DocBook alone
doesn't have.
The namespaces concept is one of them. I let you make links using text
like this:
[[wiki:Linux kernel]]
[[ldp:Linux-FAQ]]
and my code resolves those to be links to the correct urls. Now what
I'm going to do with the Wikipedia articles is first select a set of
what I consider to be good articles for the LDP, and then do an
automatic update that looks at all of our WikiText documents, sees
which Wikipedia articles they link to, and mirrors them. All nice and
automagic, the way I like things.
This code is all written. I'm extracting the links, collating them
from the Wikipedia data, and converting them from Wikipedia's format
to my WikiText. Their format is similar, since it's what I based mine
on, but it is not identical. Among other things, they let you put a
sect3 without a parent sect2 tag (since it's only using html
headings). So there's a translation step, which is only a few lines of
perl.
Now I'm going to write a script to generate an index.html, create a
/wikipedia/ subdirectory, and add a link on the home page. If you have
problems with this, or concerns, or just want to talk about it first,
then speak now or forever hold your peace. :-)
And btw here's another project I'm working on in the background -- a
texinfo to docbook converter. I did some time searching Google for
one, but found only dozens of list archives where people said they
wish they had one. This is a fairly big project, but I think I have a
workable implementation plan. We'll see when I can actually product
the code, though. Probably a month away.
Actually, it's texinfo to WikiText to DocBook, but the end result is
the same. By going via WikiText, I get the capabilities that I am
putting into that format and its tools, and it is also *much* simpler
to generate from the texinfo sources.
Once I get that utility into a fairly workable condition, I'm going to
use it to convert the Jargon File sources (which are texinfo) into
docbook as well, and mirror *them* on the LDP, and provide a namespace
to link to them.
This is all to accomplish two larger, strategic goals. One, getting
more depth and breadth to our content, but building on the works of
others, and two, getting much more massively interlinked.
So people, let me know how you feel about all of this. I want to see
the LDP kick some ass this year. I want to see us be more innovative
and more ambitious. And have more fun doing it, too.
Later,
--
David C. Merrill http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project ####@####.####
Collection Editor & Coordinator http://www.linuxdoc.org
He [Bill Gates] acted like a spoiled kid, which is what he was.
--Ed Roberts, Gates' employer at MITS in the 1970's
(Atlanta Journal-Costitution, 04-27-97)
