On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 12:01:00AM +0100, Buttay cyril wrote:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 11:14:51PM +0100, Buttay cyril wrote:
I'm currently working on a (python) wiki to pdf converter, based on wiki2pdf, which is no longer actively maintained.
My hobby horse is "Get The Glue Right", which leans me to ask:
would it not be {easier,more useful} to direct effort towards wikitext2docbook? Doesn't docbook already know how to get to PDF?
Well, I picked one of the existing project (wiki2pdf) for the following reasons: 1- it uses python, which is one of the only languages I am nearly comfortable with (I'm not a programmer) 2- the objective for me is to create a wikibook-to-Latex converter. I plan to keep this piece of code client-side, because I know that even a really good parser will need some tweaking of the LaTeX source to produce a good pdf on something as long as a wikibook. Among the features of the program is the automatic download of images and wiki pages, something I can easily do with python
Indeed, and I vote for client side, as well.
3- the list of alternative parsers ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers ) does not mention wikitext2docbook, and says that flexbisonparse is "Intended as an eventual replacement to the parsing code inside MediaWiki itself", which is rather promising!
I don't know that that is what Magnus is calling it, but that's what it does. I forget what language he's doing it in. Check the list archives; he's mentioned it here in the last couple of months (and may well chime in here).
In an other hand, the tests I made with docbook were not very good from a typographic point of view (I think the docbook to pdf conversion uses LaTeX, but the stylesheets are oriented towards automation rather than quality). I will have a look at wikitext2docbook, though.
Worth a couple minutes, at least, I would think. My perception of it is that if someone's going to put work into fixing the typography, the more people who can benefit from that, the better. Hence, I kibitz.
Cheers, -- jra