MediaWiki to gtkdoc converter

[GoogleCodeExporter]

F-Spot and Banshee create and edit their user guides in MediaWiki, and also
include the guides in the binary packages as gtkdoc documents. Currently
the conversion is done by hand, so there is a need to automate this process
with an automatic converter, to generate the gtkdoc xml from the MediaWiki
guides. 

Deliverables:
Conversion script, from MediaWiki to GtkDoc

Complexity:
Medium

Resources:
F-Spot: http://f-spot.org/
Banshee: http://www.banshee.org/
Gtkdoc: http://live.gnome.org/DocBook

Original issue reported on code.google.com by shana.u...@gmail.com on 27 Nov 2007 at 5:12

Attachments:

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[deleted comment]

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Is support for templates and all MediaWiki WikiText syntax required? I have 
been 
doing some work with wikipedia database dumps for other research and I have 
been 
using an adapted lex based parser that supports a pretty good subset of the 
format 
(almost all of the common syntax except templates and probably most tables).  
The 
current code I have might be adaptable to this project.

Original comment by schley...@gmail.com on 28 Nov 2007 at 6:37

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Is there a required language for this script? If I claimed this task and 
delivered a
script in ruby, would it be accepted?

Original comment by williamj...@gmail.com on 30 Nov 2007 at 4:30

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I claim this task. Note I have already claimed Issue 39 under gnome, but I am 
waiting
for it to be marked as completed.

Original comment by williamj...@gmail.com on 30 Nov 2007 at 4:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

My other task has been marked as completed.

Original comment by williamj...@gmail.com on 30 Nov 2007 at 5:53

[GoogleCodeExporter]

schleyfox, williamjohnston.in.wi, sorry about the response delays, the mono 
summit
has taken quite a bit of everyone's time.

@larry, aaron, sending this over to you guys so you can see what you need most 
on
this, feel free to change ownership

Original comment by shana.u...@gmail.com on 2 Dec 2007 at 10:38

• Changed state: Claimed
• Added labels: ClaimedBy-williamjohnston.in.wi

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I think that both templates and tables would be required to support. We use 
tables in
a number of places, and I think templates are used for some common elements 
that are
not native to MediaWiki and to support shared navigation.

If Ruby is to be used, it would be nice if it runs on IronRuby.

Original comment by aaron.bo...@gmail.com on 2 Dec 2007 at 11:02

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Can I get read access to the banshee and f-spot wikis? I need to see the code I 
will
be converting.

Thanks

Original comment by williamj...@gmail.com on 3 Dec 2007 at 2:00

[GoogleCodeExporter]

you can get the raw pages this way:
http://f-spot.org/index.php?title=User_Guide&action=raw

that conversion is now done manually for f-spot, you can check for the results 
in svn
(in the docs folder)

s

Original comment by sdelcr...@gmail.com on 4 Dec 2007 at 2:55

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Original comment by shana.u...@gmail.com on 7 Dec 2007 at 6:56

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The raw wikitext link does not translate to the banshee homepage. How do I get 
access
to the raw wikitext for banshee?

Original comment by williamj...@gmail.com on 13 Dec 2007 at 10:17

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I think that I am going to have to relinquish this task. I have tried a bunch of
approaches and I cannot find an approach that is robust enough. The problem is 
that
wikitext is designed to target how the document looks. Docbook is designed to
determine what the document is. So in translation from wiki to docbook there are
usually several ways to map attributes and elements. The right choice differs 
between
situations.
This difference also causes the problem of consistency. Banshee and F-Spot 
format
their wikis very differently. But if you convert correctly, the docbook will 
look the
same, and the differences will be expressed in stylesheets. This is a task that 
is
huge, and any attempt that does not encompass the entirety of this is going to
require either strict conventions for the wiki, or a low quality conversion.
I suggest that as a long term solution, you have you main copy of the user 
guides be
in docbook and then write a script to convert to wiki. Or just create a 
stylesheet
and convert to html. This is what docbook is designed for.
I am willing to do a manual conversion to docbook and then write a stylesheet 
for the
website. If you want me to do this please modify the title of this task. 
Otherwise
please unclaim it.
Any script is going to be more pain to maintain than it is worth.

Btw: If anyone wants the unfinished ruby scripts I wrote, just ask. There is a 
perl
project that does this, but it requires strict conventions for the wikitext and 
does
not encompass all of the current usages of the f-spot user guide. The site is 
located
here:
http://tldp.org/wt2db/

Original comment by williamj...@gmail.com on 17 Dec 2007 at 1:37

[GoogleCodeExporter]

You've been un-claimed.

Original comment by lunchtim...@gmail.com on 19 Dec 2007 at 1:34

• Changed state: Open
• Removed labels: ClaimedBy-williamjohnston.in.wi

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Have you guys looked at deplate? It's implemented in Ruby, but it supports 
tables and
wiki templates. 
http://deplate.sourceforge.net/index.php

Original comment by flor...@gmail.com on 9 Mar 2008 at 3:04