[Mediawiki-l] Re: What is the current state of content importing/exporting?

[Ashar Voultoiz]

Matt England wrote:
<snip>
> Meanwhile I see lots of other work/references to create wiki-markup 
> editors. Seems like they are trying to solve the same problems.  Why not 
> just make an external markup language, possibly in the form of a XML-based 
> DTD...like DocBook??

There is a flex/bison parser that, given a Wiki text, will output some
kind of XML. Code is by Magnus Manske and Timwi and seems stalled:

 http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/flexbisonparse/

One could then eventually use a template to convert the to HTML /
OpenOffice document (is that what a DTD is for?).

Probably a tool can be made to convert OpenOffice XML documents to a
wiki XML document then back to wiki syntax.


There is also an 'external editor' extension that let you edit the
wikisyntax in another editor (for example vi or notepad):

  http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/extensions/ee/

No conversion is made to the wiki text though.


Tom Gilder included a WYSIWYG editor (http://www.fckeditor.net/) in his
enotif patch:
  http://developer.berlios.de/projects/enotifwiki/

That might be the easiest way for users not willing to learn the wiki
syntax. Not sure if copy-pasting a word document in the editor will
automaticly convert stuff, although it might.


> Nonetheless, the point stands: MediaWiki is being used for corporate 
> intranets all over the place, and it's intruding on TWiki's 
> turf.  MediaWiki can continue to say "we don't want to do that" if they 
> want, and there's nothing wrong with that.  I just want the corporate 
> intranet features, and I'm willing support those who want to make 
> add-ons/plugins that do such things.

MediaWiki is really meant for Wikipedia and it just 'happen' to work for
other usages (aka something else than writing an online encyclopedia).
Some stuff is implemented though for other usage (Tom Gilder email
notification stuff come in mind).

Part of the problem is that coding MediaWiki is more like a hobby than a
full time job. So if something is not interesting enough for developers,
chances it will never be coded 8-) . Hopefully one day, someone with
free time (and the same interest you have) will code missing feature,
either in the main code or as a patch/extension.


<snip>
> In fact, MediaWiki is one of my favorite tools, and it's been immensely 
> useful to my startup organization (we've grown from 2 people to 17 in less 
> then a year, and all our docs are MediaWiki based).  I'm trying to make it 
> better--or, to put it another way, add features to achieve my goals.

Amazing :) Feel free to write a paper about setting up a wiki in a
company and how one can teach users to use that 'anyone can edit
anything' tool. That might be interesting.

cheers,

-- 
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080