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Re: Developing novice/newbie installer guide



On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 11:20:33AM +0000, Chris Lale wrote:
> Douglas Allan Tutty wrote to debian-user@lists.debian.org:
> >On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 03:00:05PM +0000, Chris Lale wrote:
> >  
> >>Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> >>    
> >>>If we were to have a page clearly labled as GPL, would you be able to
> >>>spit out an html of a wiki page any beter than we could pull off with a
> >>>browser?
> >>>      
> >>I
> >[...]
> >
> >What I mean is that if we create a main wiki page with a separate wiki
> >page for each major portion of the project instead of one HUGE wiki
> >page, I can't get wget to follow links in the wiki page to grab those
> >other pages.  
> >  
> 
> This is probably not what a wiki is designed for. It is not designed 
> primarily to develop individual webpages for other purposes. The final 
> product is the wiki itself.
> 
> Normally you link a family of wiki pages using this syntax:
> 
>    [[name-of-page-to-link-to]]
> 
> (see http://newbiedoc.berlios.de/wiki/Help:Wikitext_markup#Links).
> 
> In the case of NewbieDOC,  There is a page for each major section (eg 
> "Articles", "Notes", etc) with links to the subsections (ie the 
> articles). In NewbieDOC articles, a table of contents is generated by 
> default (optionally with numbered headings).

There are wiki systems that allow a directory structure within wikis.  
And ones that manage multiple subwikis with references between them 
(Twiki is one).  One could use the structure of such a wili to organise 
a hierarchy for the purpos of extracting a document.

-- hendrik

> 
> >Take an example:
> >
> >	MainPage(TOC)
> >		Chapter1-page
> >		Chapter2-page
> >		.
> >		.
> >
> >I can use wget or a browser on the TOC, Chapter1-page, and Chapter2-page,
> >but I end up with three separate html pages not really linked (in fact,
> >the links in the TOC still point to the wiki not the files I download
> >with wget.
> >
> >  
> 
> You should probably use a webcrawler application such as harvestman or 
> httrack rather than wget for this.
> 
> The magic of a wiki is that it does everything automatically - editing, 
> rendering to html, version control, etc. Very little manual intervention 
> is needed. It sounds that you envisage needing more control over the 
> system than a wiki provides, and that the project will produce a single 
> large work much in the manner of the Debian Reference manual - 
> effectively a book rather than an article.
> 
> The wiki approach is aimed more at being accessible to people who have 
> only writing skills. Other approaches will probably need contributors to 
> have, or to develop, some technical skill in areas such as editing, 
> rendering to html, version control, etc.
> 
> Ultimately, the minimum outcome will be HTML (chunked or non-chunked); 
> probably PDF and text versions too. I would suggest that this is how the 
> alternatives compare.
> 
> _Wiki_
>    easy to edit with GUI or console browsers
>    automatic rendering to HTML
>    critical items can be protected from editing whilst still allowing 
> comments, thus squashing bugs fast.
>    automatic version control
>    internal messaging system, email and RSS
>    pages added automatically to website
> 
> _DocBook SGML/XML_
>    best edited with console apps such as Emacs or Vim with the 
> appropriate plugins
>    need to learn markup unless exporting from OOo or LyX (GUI only)
>    SGML/XML tools to render to HTML, PDF, text, etc
>    SGML tools are still probably better than XML tools
>    external version control and development mailing list needed to 
> manage the project
>    website managed separately
> 
> _OpenOffice.org_
>    Open Document Format
>    X needed
>    no markup to learn (WYSIWIG)
>    can export to DocBook, HTML, PDF, text, etc
>    external version control and development mailing list needed to 
> manage the project
>    website managed separately
> 
> _Lyx_
>    X needed
>    no markup to learn (WYSIWYM)
>    various document classes including article, book, docbook
>    can export to DVI, DocBook, HTML, PDF, text, etc
>    external version control and development mailing list needed to 
> manage the project
>    website managed separately
> 
> HTH,
> 
> -- 
> Chris.
> 
> 
> -- 
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