On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 01:03:26PM -0800, Axel Boldt wrote:
Part of my plan is to make Wikipedias available on dict format and put it them into Debian packages. The less HTML it will use, the more useful these dicts will be.
Why not put the rendered HTML tree into Debian? That way all the formatting including tables will be the way the authors intended it to be.
Putting HTML tree into Debian is fine, but that's not really a point. The point is to have Wikipedia accessible the same way foldoc, wordnet, jargon and all other data is - from text mode command line.
In any event, I don't think that requirements of a possible future presentation format should guide our present editing decisions. Right now, Wikipedia is presented in HTML.
There is really no reason for Wikipedia to depend on particular presentation format. If it will become multi-format it will be much more useful. Dict was just one example. I'm sure people have their own list of formats they would like to see Wikipedia in.
Another obvious format is TeX (and ps/pdf generated from it) for printable version of Wikipedia pages.