discuss: Thread: wiki-to-linuxdoc ?

I've taken a brief look at Moin-Moin and think it's markup is no
easier than a limited subset of linuxdoc.   So why not develop a
Moin-Moin to linuxdoc converter and conversely?  It may not be easy to
do this since linuxdoc allows omission not only of closing tags, but a
number of tag pairs.

wikis are in a sense just sgml documents since for sgml, the equivalent
of tags doesn't need to be enclosed in <> brackets and the wiki "tags",
consisting of strings, could be mapped to the normal type of tags
enclosed in <> using a sgml Datatype Definition (DTD).  (How to do
this is shown at http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/03/03/sgmlwiki.html
(XML.com: From Wiki to XML, through SGML). Then run the wiki thru a
sgml parser to get the standard type tags in <>.  They could be
linuxdoc tags (or docbook tags) depending on the DTD.  But for
linuxdoc, the result would unfortunately contain all the closing tags
and omitted tag pairs and be almost as unreadable as docbook.  Is
there software to remove excess tags?

Technically speaking, the wiki "tags" are not really sgml tags.  But
sgml via its "!shortref" allows one to map the wiki "tags" to valid
sgml tags.  In the DTD, one designates that it's OK to omit sgml tags,
and then the sgml parser finds the missing tags using the !shortref
mapping provided.  So what is technically sgml's ability to find
missing tags is equivalent to mapping wiki "tags" into sgml tags
(enclosed in <> brackets>.

I wonder if this method has been used much for conversion to doc-book.
And it may not be the best for moin-moin.  Since moin-moin has it's
own parser, using the output of that parser and then converting it to
linuxdoc would likely be easier ??

		David Lawyer

David Lawyer a écrit :
> I've taken a brief look at Moin-Moin and think it's markup is no
> easier than a limited subset of linuxdoc.   So why not develop a
> Moin-Moin to linuxdoc converter and conversely?  It may not be easy to
> do this since linuxdoc allows omission not only of closing tags, but a
> number of tag pairs.

I don't really see the interest. Better have all converted to docbook. 
as long as *the user* don't have to bother with docbook, it can be 
seen as a good support.

like this anybody can use what it wants: docbook directly if he wants 
and like it, linuxdoc if he wants and wiki markup or simple text 
markup on a wiki page

I sse the path like this:

<any entry supported format>----<docbook>---(docbook backend)---<any 
user supported reading format>

jdd
-- 
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM

On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 11:16:37PM +0200, jdd wrote:
> David Lawyer a ?crit :
>> I've taken a brief look at Moin-Moin and think it's markup is no
>> easier than a limited subset of linuxdoc.   So why not develop a
>> Moin-Moin to linuxdoc converter and conversely?  It may not be easy to
>> do this since linuxdoc allows omission not only of closing tags, but a
>> number of tag pairs.
>
> I don't really see the interest. Better have all converted to docbook.  
> as long as *the user* don't have to bother with docbook, it can be seen 
> as a good support.

Except that docbook doesn't convert to linuxdoc (although linuxdoc
does convert to docbook --but not perfectly).  Thus if one wants they
can edit the docbook version of the wiki but there's no linuxdoc
version to edit.  And since linuxdoc is easier to use, it would be
nice to have wiki2linuxdoc and a linuxdoc2wiki converters.  Then one
could use linuxdoc to edit wikis.  But I'm not sure if making such
converters is worth the effort.  It might be better to try to develop a
docbook to linuxdoc converter but that's not so easy and markup
information will be lost on conversion.  I don't have time to work on
such projects but would encourage others to do so.

			David Lawyer

>
> like this anybody can use what it wants: docbook directly if he wants  
> and like it, linuxdoc if he wants and wiki markup or simple text markup 
> on a wiki page
>
> I sse the path like this:
>
> <any entry supported format>----<docbook>---(docbook backend)---<any  
> user supported reading format>
>
> jdd
> -- 
> http://www.dodin.net
> http://valerie.dodin.org
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM
>
> ______________________
> http://lists.tldp.org/
>
>

David Lawyer a écrit :

> Except that docbook doesn't convert to linuxdoc (although linuxdoc
> does convert to docbook --but not perfectly).  Thus if one wants they
> can edit the docbook version of the wiki

I don't think the wiki works that way (moimoin at least). Once on the 
wiki you have to edit the document with the wiki layout.

> nice to have wiki2linuxdoc and a linuxdoc2wiki converters.

*any* converter is a good thing. I can think of many use of such thing 
like linuxdoc to docbook to wiki, etc.

I see the future for LDP like this:

* people that already know and like linuxdoc can continue using it. 
Don't we have a good linuxdoc to docbook converter? at least we have 
to have as many backend for linuxdoc than docbook.
->however, I don't think we should *promote* anymore linuxdoc for new 
authors.

* people that know and like docbook can use it. I they want to be 
hosted in svn/cvs/whatever, no problem. If they want to be hosted by 
the wiki, they will have to use a wiki compatible set of docbook 
commands. Docbook is certainly better fitted as soon as one wants to 
write *books* (openSUSE manuals are written by Novell in a docbook subset)
-> We can promote docbook writing. We can even install a docbookwiki 
for people wanting one.

* all other people should be urged to write *in the wiki*. We have to 
write a script to make the translation from wiki to docbook. Given the 
moimoin features, this should be nearly obvious.

For *all and any* of these solutions, we need *templates* even docbook 
writing is pretty easy if one have good templates. MoinMoin make it 
very easy, given it show templates anytie somebody asks for creating a 
new page. let only write one :-))

jdd

-- 
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-eic8MSSfM