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

Sun Aug 14 15:55:59 UTC 2005

Not to do a blatant plug here or anything (as I like MediaWiki far better 
and 9/10 wikis I run/own are MediaWiki - mainly because of the awesome 
plugin architecture) but my brother runs the http://EditMe.com wiki company 
which, besides being ridiculously easy to use and dirt cheap, is also HTML 
based which might make MS-Save-As-Crap-HTML -> Wiki a bit easier. EditMe is 
a bit better suited to the "I refuse to learn anything" corporate crowd and 
has a very easy to use MS Word type editing environment. He'll work with you 
on corporate installations if using it over the web isn't an option.

He's been making noise for a few years about Open Sourcing editme if that 
matters - he just never seems to get around to it.

RE The HTML->Wiki Code... it'd probably be fairly trivial (naivety sucks :) 
to write some XSLT that'd translate XHTML -> Wiki code (note, I said XHTML, 
not HTML, so, in short, tidy(html) ) and then wrap that in an extension. 

-ben

On 8/13/05, Matt England <mengland at mengland.net> wrote:
> 
> At 8/13/2005 08:20 PM, Kyle Hamilton wrote:
> >If you can write a
> >preprocessor (implemented either locally or on the server) to convert
> >Word-format to Wiki markup, that would be your best bet.
> 
> I suspect I seek something to this end.
> 
> Ever tried to take a word doc and make all the sections/styles convert to
> MediaWiki markup? It looked far from simple to me. Further, a
> Word-styles-to-wiki-styles pre-determined format looks like it would need
> to be setup.
> 
> > (Frankly,
> >I'm not sure what Word's format is at this point, nor how easy it
> >would be to implement such a preprocessor.)
> >
> >Now, in response to your individual points:
> >
> >1) There is already no need to keep going back to a web page to create
> >the initial import. All of this can be done locally (and, in fact,
> >that's what I've been doing with my own wiki, documenting the fbmuck
> >project at Sourceforge -- create the initial content locally, save a
> >copy in case something goes wrong [which it hasn't yet, but I'm used
> >to Murphy's law], and then copy/paste it into the edit box, and post
> >it. "Initial revision" is usually my tag for those imports.
> 
> I don't follow this point, unfortunately. :(
> 
> >2) ...so why don't you create some Word/PPT macros to convert the
> >formatting to Wiki markup, and then follow the recommendation in #1?
> 
> I or someone else may have to go do that. See above.
> 
> >4) XML is far too complex for what the wiki is designed to do.
> 
> I don't follow this, either...but I certainly appreciate the signficant
> response(s). :)
> 
> >Remember, wiki was designed to solve a problem: collaborative editing
> >in a low-requirement, low-capability environment.
> 
> For what it's worth, I've done an extensive study on all the wiki software
> I could find, and TWiki and MediaWiki were always at the top of the 
> list(s)
> for all the features and capabilities that I could find (although MW is
> poor in the import/export and ACL areas, but that's about it) in wiki's.
> 
> In other words, MW is the cream of the crop, imho, at least given the
> current state of the art/technology/industry in open-source land, anyway.
> 
> > If you want
> >collaborative editing of Word documents and your users refuse to
> >switch, use Visual SourceSafe and Word's built-in collaboration
> >capabilities. Granted, they're feature-poor, and if a document that's
> >designed to be placed on the web isn't stripped before doing so, some
> >very embarassing things can be found by anyone who loads the document
> >and turns on the collaboration views.
> 
> Yep, they suck. :)
> 
> >Again, as Mr. Vibber wrote, MW isn't designed to be used on an
> >intranet. "Why force the world to come to you?" you ask... well, it's
> >because of the nature of the beast.
> 
> 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??
> 
> >I'm the equivalent of a manager for an open-source project, but I
> >understand that it's often like herding cats, and our decisions have
> >to be made by consensus rather than any Word From On High), we don't
> >have managers who refuse to change or learn (if we did, we'd boot
> >them, because if they can't keep up, they're dead weight), most of us
> >don't have business models to attempt to create and maintain, most of
> >us don't have a motivation for money...
> 
> To clarify: the point of corporate managers as a user audience was in
> response to Jan Steinman's comments. This was not an attack on MediaWiki.
> 
> 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.
> 
> > (And since you're already planning on possibly forking MW to serve as
> >a Requirements Management software, you're already 3/4 of the way
> >there. :) )
> 
> Well...I'm not sure *I'm* going to be doing it, but someone might. :) I'm
> in discussions with another startup company that's thinking about doing 
> this.
> 
> >I apologize if the tone of this mail sounds fairly harsh...
> 
> No, doesn't seem that harsh to me. Lots of good info here. Do I request
> to much? I'm just trying to see what's out there, and so far, the answer
> is "not much." Hey, that's the facts, can't argue with that.
> 
> Alas, however, I've seen enough references to content
> import/expert/conversion to think something *is* happening or might happen
> in the future. Anyone care to add to this thread?
> 
> >The MediaWiki team didn't have to make the
> >code available (though if they hadn't, they wouldn't have acquired the
> >competencies that they now have). They most certainly didn't make it
> >available to be derided for their decisions.
> 
> Is someone deriding someone/something else? I missed that part. I'm
> simply looking for info and trying to sell a point. I was miffed at
> someone (back in March) who essentially said "you don't know what
> collaborative editing is," but that person was not Kyle nor Brion.
> 
> 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.
> 
> >That being said, though, I'd love to see an HTML-to-WikiCode
> >translator that would take (for example) <ol> and <ul> and their
> >associated <li>'s and make them either '#' or '*' respectively. I'd
> >love to see something to convert <h1>text</h1> to =text=, and so on.
> >That way, among other things, MS Word would be able to use its "edit
> >HTML" mode (no matter how ugly it makes its HTML) and import it back
> >into the wiki, with Wiki Markup.
> 
> Now we're talking. :)
> 
> > I'll probably end up writing it
> >myself, since most of the documentation for my project is already in
> >HTML format.
> 
> Want any donations? I'm afraid I can't contribute time or development (to
> much effort for my own company's software), but I can contribute nominal
> money, if that helps.
> 
> -Matt
> 
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