preparing for the wiki move

[Matthew east]

On Mon, 2005-05-30 at 10:47 +0100, Henrik Nilsen Omma wrote:
> Matthew east wrote:
> 
> >I just saw that the pages from the old wiki have all been imported
into
> >the test wiki... so much for the plan that we evolved!
> >
> >Again the docteam was kept out of the loop while this was done :/
That
> >frustrates me to some extent because of the time spent discussing how
we
> >can help recently.
> >  
> >
> Sorry you feel that way, I probably should have informed you that we
> were running this test. But the moving of these pages was purely a
> technical exercise to develop a script to do the transfer. It doesn't
> necessarily have any impact on what the final page structure will be
> like. We developed a script to simply copy all the pages across from
the
> old to the test site to prove to ourselves that it can be done.

Thanks for explaining. I didn't realise this was gonna happen because
you seemed quite set on transferring them by hand, but you're right,
this is very cool.

> As for the doc-team-specific pages, they can me renamed and
restructured
> after the transfer  or they can be excluded from the transfer and
copied
> manually, whatever we decide.  

So what do we think about this? Is there any chance that the automatic
transfer can turn the links that zwiki creates due to the parenting
system into hard links inside the documents? This would really help
because in terms of organising the material (I'm thinking of
UserDocumentation here), it would be much easier to use the parenting
system than to make all the links by hand. Jane did mention in one of
her emails that this might be possible.

> We can go with the 'doc/' structure that
> we talked about, in which case we only need to rename those pages in
the
> new wiki to 'doc/PageName' and those links in the contents page will
be
> active. The down-side of that approach is that many existing links
will
> be broken (as discussed). I've since discovered a possible alternative
> using page categories, that might allow us to keep most of the current
> URLs, but still get better structure. See:
> http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/HelpOnCategories So one option is to
keep
> most of the current page names and use categories to create structure
> and then create a 'stable/ section for the maturing docs that we've
> talked about (previously known as 'Published wiki' 'doc/breezy'
> 'doc/trunk' doc/frozen' etc. -- it's all the same idea).

Would it be difficult to create categories for all of the pages? If not,
then perhaps this is a good idea. However I think it may be difficult to
get users into the habit of giving new pages categories as they create
them so maybe it would bump up the editing overhead a fair amount?

> >Anyway, moving on from that ;) Are there any issues that we can help
out
> >with from the transition? The two questions that spring immediately
to
> >mind are:
> >
> >1. the pages which had contents born out of the zwiki parenting
scheme
> >have now lost that. What can/should we do to get them back?
> >  
> >
> Yes, that is a structural difference between the two systems. I think
> using the category system described in the above link might be the
answer.

See above, is it possible to make them into hard links?

> >2. is there any way to merge changes that will occur on the normal
wiki
> >into the new wiki?
> >
> The important thing is: don't make important changes on the TEST wiki.
> The automated transfer takes about 1 hour to run and can be repeated
any
> number of times. The real and final transfer will over write all the
> current pages in test and bring everything in sync. That will need to
be
> a highly coordinated exercise, which involves switching over the new
> wiki to the existing URL. We still need to clear up a few technical
> issues such as authentication and the wiki template (see:
> http://gemini.starshine.org/Ubuntu WIP). The transfer should occur in
> 1-2 weeks and proper notice will then be given to everyone.

looks very cool. One thing: are there not going to be tabs at the top of
the screen as with the current website (Ubuntu, Community, Support,
Wiki, Planet).

> On remaining issues: We did not copy the restructured text in this
trial
> run, and the restructured text plugin is currently not installed in
this
> moin instance. Steve Alexander, who wrote the transfer script,
wondered
> if we really wanted to carry restructured format forward. Is it worth
> the confusion of having two markup systems to choose from? Is the
> restructured layout so very much better that it is worth keeping
and/or
> how difficult would it be to translate also those pages to Moin? 

No there is no reason for keeping the RST docs that I am aware of, just
that we have not got round to "Moinizing" them. We can do it I guess.
Mikko is good at it and I'll have a go after my exams are done.

> If we
> are transferring wiki docs into DocBook then I guess the layout can be
> tweaked there (In other news: Mikko Virkkilä is making good progress
on
> a Moin -> DocBook parser)

awesome news. Its in svn now so we can test. top work!

Matt

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