Revdocs on a wiki

[Sivakatirswami]

well, the search function helps on wikis: enter: "PDF"

But PMwiki.org has things going for that a Rev wiki would not

#1 Professor Patrick Michaud (PM) is incredibly dedicated to  PMwiki  
which is a "product" albeit open source. In it's own right, the issue  
of site maintenance are handled immediately if he is not traveling.  
He releases updates to PMwiki at phenomenal rates...

#2 a large number of the contributers are web-wiki admins themselves  
whose job it is, or part of it is to maintain wikis and they are very  
active on the site.

But why it's a good model is that it is the documentation site for  
PMwiki. It's surprising to see that most people respect that and  
there is very little "wiki bloat" from people simply waxing on and on...

lesson: the Rev Wiki wants to be constrained to being a documentation  
tool and not become a giant blog. Surprisingly though PM has this  
site pretty much "wide open" (anyone can edit anything, but he has  
spamme controls built in) very little OT blogging goes on at all.

But it obviously requires a bit of dedication in terms of real time  
online by  several people.

I guess I find PM wiki so useful is mostly because

a) I don't know PHP, but I have a full blown wiki and farm on our  
site that I can admin the site  with very little input.
b) no dBase back end... (and that doesn't make it slower...)

I not that that community also suffers from the other issue where a  
large part of the solutions and useful dialogs are all still found in  
the user email forum, and much of that would never, ever see the  
light of day on the wiki... were it not for Patricks dedication to  
updating the docs...


On Oct 27, 2005, at 1:26 PM, Chipp Walters wrote:

> Sivakatirswami,
>
> Hmmmm.
> http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/PublishPDF
>
> Had a heck of a time trying to find that link! I think this may be  
> a problems with wiki's in general..navigating to want you want.  
> There is no 'forced' organization and as such no one ever seems to  
> know where everything is.
>
> But that link is very interesting. In fact I've got a complete GUI  
> written around the openSource version of HTMLDOC. Currently it only  
> works on Windows, but I seem to remember handing off the Mac/Linux  
> port to Klaus? I'm not sure as it's been awhile.
>
> In any case, Altuit's HTML2PDF plugin for Hemingway uses HTMLDOC to  
> successfully convert Hemingway websites into PDF documentation,  
> including linked Table of Contents. I believe Dan Shafer is using  
> this process to build his eBooks.
>
> The problem with HTMLDOC is that it only handles very few markup  
> tags. So, one couldn't produce a magazine quality PDF document from  
> it, but it's great for documentation.
>
> For instance:
>
> I wrote a simple stack which parsed the XML help stack and built a  
> website out of it, and then converted the website to a PDF document:
>
> It's not inclusive, but you can get the idea here:
>
> http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/Transcript/default.htm
>
> Question:
>
> How would one manage 'wiki-bloat' where different people post so  
> much commentary about a function or handler or feature, that it  
> becomes impossible to navigate through? Would special 'editors'  
> need be appointed? If a wiki could be converted into a PDF, I'm not  
> so sure I like the idea of a single PDF document with *everyones*  
> thoughts on a topic.
>
> I'm sure this topic has come up before.
>
> best,
>
> Chipp
>
>
> Sivakatirswami wrote:
>
>> www.pmwiki.org offers some solutions to most of these    
>> problems...check it out the cookbook recipes for PDF export of  
>> the  wiki pages.
>>
>
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