Re: MSDN-JS Project

Hi, Max-

On 5/5/13 2:28 PM, Max Polk wrote:
> Hello Doug and Alexander and all,
>
> Doug had said:
>> So, is there anything we can do right now to help you out?
>
> Yes.  My current status is I have an formatted intermediate format
> with html links corrected (links between pages fixed) and an initial
> script run on one page where it convert it to a non-template
> non-extension plain vanilla Mediawiki synax format.  By plain I mean
> equal signs for sections, extra lines to separate paragraphs and soon
> to be double-square brackets for links within the wiki and asterisks
> for unordered lists.  All the stuff you ordinarily see in Mediawiki
> syntax.

Do you have a link to that output? Or do you not have the write-to-wiki 
part of the script working yet?


> There also seems to be four formats in the wiki right now.
>
> First is plain Mediawiki syntax pages such as
> (http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/css).  Other than a language bar,
> it's pretty ordinary format for a wiki.
>
> The second is almost pure HTML such as
> (http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/concepts/programming/javascript/regex).
>   That might have been imported content, and I'm guessing you will want
> to eventually convert it to either Mediawiki syntax or use the fourth
> option below.
>
> The third is a kind of form edit such as
> (http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/javascript/tutorials) where you can
> choose to either Edit or Edit source.  That particular page may not be
> a good example because the content is outside of a template and not
> edtiable or visible pressing Edit.
>
> The fourth is a form edit where "Edit" edits the metadata and content
> as well, such as
> (http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/javascript/functions), where I see
> in Edit Source that the content embedded as a template parameter,
> where Edit source shows:
>
>      {{Tutorial
>      |Content= ....page content here!... }}
>
> I'm guessing we are aiming for the latter, is that right?  That means
> put the standard templates above and below, and the content becomes a
> template parameter with proper escaping such as the pipe character,
> etc.

That's correct. The ideal output is this fourth kind, which will work 
with our templating system.


> I run a wiki for our team at work and we keep the user-contributed
> text as clean and simple as possible, meaning, we tell people to avoid
> embedding html and divs (except for a bit of fanciness on the site
> landing page) to make it as user-friendly as possible for the next
> editor, with the smallest possible learning curve.  I see the fourth
> choice above as being ideal.  People hit "Edit" (not "Edit source")
> and the content form field looks just the simple Mediawiki syntax.

Yes, that is the goal, but many people who are more familiar with HTML 
and less familiar with wikitext have bent that rule (which is a real pain).

Sometimes it's for good reason (they needed a special formatting hook 
that wikitext didn't provide), but sometimes it's just people being sloppy.

Part of the fault lies in the unfortunately complex-seeming editing 
interface... if it were nicer, especially if it were WYSIWYG, it would 
not be as error-prone.


In any case, if you could show us an example of the output so far, that 
would be great! Then we can work toward the ideal output.

Feel free to suggest a page structure, as well, and we can discuss it 
and make templates to match, which you can then feed back into the 
conversion script.


Thanks-
-Doug

Received on Monday, 6 May 2013 08:20:51 UTC