Re: editing documents in a wiki

From: "Sandro Hawke" <sandro@w3.org>
Subject: editing documents in a wiki
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:12:04 -0400

> "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com> writes:
> > 
> > From: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
> > Subject: Postponed agenda items
> > Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:53:05 -0400
> > 
> > [...]
> > 
> > > Should we edit the documents inside the wiki? (html, or wiki markup?)
> > > 
> > > -Alan
> > 
> > Well, I'm still not completely sure whether the wiki will support full
> > HTML, and how easy it is to edit significant documents within the WIKI.
> > (All I know about editing within a WIKI is that I'm sure not going to do
> > it by using Firefox editing.)
> > 
> > If I can't easily extract the contents of a document section, move it to
> > another editor (EMACS), edit it there, and then update the document
> > section,
> 
> Step 1: install the firefox extension "It's All Text":
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4125

Well, this actually does a fair bit, as long as problems with concurrent
editing don't arise.  (And as long as the bug that appears to be showing
up right now goes away.)

> There are also command-line tools for wiki download/upload, but I
> haven't tried them.
> 
> > then I'm casting a very firm vote against having our documents
> > in the WIKI.   Note that the round-trip has to be able to produce
> > wrapped lines for editing and then not produce diffs related to this
> > wrapping, unwrapping, or re-wrapping, or any artifacts of the wrapping.
> 
> Is your concern here:
>     - you don't want some tool messing up where you-as-editor
>       put the line-ends?   The wiki shouldn't be a problem here.
> or  
>     - you want people to be able to see the changes for what they really
>       are, not the changes in line-end placement caused by emacs flowing
>       text?  The wiki diff tool sucks (IMHO), but there are external
>       HTML diff tools we can use.

Well, this and more.  I want the wiki download mechanism to wrap long
lines for me and not have line wrap changes show up in the diffs, but
also have the line wraps in short line persist. (I could live without
the last.)

> > I also need to be able to produce off-line versions of the document
> > easily and faithfully.
> 
> Yes, I'm working on reimpleming the tool RIF has been using to produce
> TRs from the wiki.   Basic features:
> 
>       - change style from wiki style to W3C TR-style (pubrules
>         compliant)
>       - combine multiple wiki pages into on TR (maybe not necessary,
>         given mediawiki's SectionEdit feature)
>       - works on old versions -- the wiki has the document history,
>         so one should be able to extract the TR as of some date.

This looks reasonable.

> One other big feature of mediawiki is that it has templates (ie macros).
> It's been a while since I'd worked in a text-processing language that
> had them, and I'd forgotten how useful they are in handling redundant
> parts of the document, like tables.

> Will that do what you want?

I don't know.  

I'm not keen on learning yet another macro language.  (I've just about
finished mourning the loss of LaTeX macros when I'm working on W3C
documents, and I'm not yet ready for re-marriage. :-)

>      -- Sandro

peter

Received on Monday, 22 October 2007 19:24:34 UTC