Wiki recommendations -- Practical Experience

[Luis Paulo]

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Chris G <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> On Wed, May 05, 2010 at 01:53:10AM +0100, Luis Paulo wrote:
>>
>> And this do say
>> 1. Your users will write text easy, but will take sometime to get used
>> to the "tricks". Those "tricks" will allow them to do headings, lists,
>> text formating (bold, italic, etc...), links, tables
>>
> The markup used by the wiki can make it easier or harder though.  For
> example, to my mind, reStructuredText is a far easier markup to use
> than most of the ones provided by Wikis.  For example a heading in
> reStructuredText is:-
>
> A Heading
> =========
>
> Whereas in many/most wiki markups it's:-
>
> =====A Heading=====
>
> The reStructuredText is much more natural and makes the original text
> readable as intended.
>
>
>> 2.
>>  a. make PDF is easy as print a html as PDF. Don't know any wiki that
>> produces OO. But if the result is html and OO format is XML, is a
>> matter of writing a transformation (like a XSLT). Don't know if it
>> exist, not saying it is easy.
>>  b. a web page can look as a word processing document, is a matter of
>> formatting, right?
>
> No, absolutely not!  The point of a web page is to get the information
> across to the user in a format that *they* have quite a lot to say
> about.  Different people, for example, use different sized screens and
> a page that doesn't scale nicely between 800x600 and 1600x1200 (say)
> isn't a good web page.  Fixed width layouts can look *very* silly on
> my 1920x1200 screen.  There are lots of other things that affect this
> too, in particular a web page should do its best to work with the
> quirks of different browsers.
>
> [snip]
>
>> 3. Can't imagine a wiki without it. Think of administrating a wiki
>> without version regression. I get into your wiki and f**k a hundred
>> pages in a few minutes. You must have even more than simple version
>> regression, a regression by user/IP, for example. That because backup
>> is just what it is, You don't do it every hour, and you don't want to
>> loose what your responsible users did. At least you don't want to tell
>> them you lost it :)
>>
> Depends on the use, I use my wiki just for myself and a couple of
> family members, it's closed to the outside world.
>
> --
> Chris Green
>

Thanks, Chris
1. Yes, it may be a matter of taste. I tend to agree with you, but

=This is my Heading 1=
....
==My Heading 2==

may be easier and more readable than
This is my Heading 1
=================
...
My Heading 2
===========

Please correct me, I'm not used to the second form

As a note, I'd love a wiki that internally store some kind of docbook
or xml representation of the wiki text, not the wiki text as is, and
then allow each user to choose his wiki dialect to edit the page  (at
least choose from a few).

2. I may have not been clear.
Was not saying s web page is like a word document. Not at all, you are right.
What I was saying is it can/might look like one if that is what you
want (and the OP wanted it to look like one for printing). Just change
the css and it will make the difference, as you surely know.

Something like this is done in many sites with the "Print this page"
link or a print button on the html page.
ex: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/242450 -> "Print this page" link
(that page don't have anything relevant for this post)

3.
Here I don't agree with you at all
I understood version regression as the possibility to go back and be
able to undo changes.
It's a must :)

You may say that if it is only you in a offline computer using the
wiki, it's not that important. But it still is nice to be able to see
what have you changed since yesterday, or how that page looked a month
ago, and be able to undo the changes if you want to.

If it is a collaborative work it's really a must. What other people
have changed since you last edited it? Remove garbage (intentional or
not), etc...
That how I see it, of course.

Best regards
Luis