Hi Pranav,
Any progress.
sorry for the delay. How was the hacking center experience?
I am copying Clayton Cornell since he is heavily involved to the
OOo wiki efforts and knows much of the matter. He is currently on
vacation, though, and will not be back before January.
Meanwhile, I would like to ask you to join the documentation project:
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/Join
and subscribe to the documentation mailing list (send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]).
We can then discuss anything around that project in public, maybe
we'll attract others that want to help in some way. I am copying
the mailing list here.
The main purpose of the project is to allow publishing aggregated
wiki content into an ODF and/or PDF "book".
Documentation content will reside in the OOo wiki under
the wiki/Documentation hierarchy. We already have some books
content on the wiki. To bundle wiki pages as books, we currently
use mediawiki templates, that represent tables of content (TOC)
defining the sequence of wiki pages that make up a book.
Every page belonging to a book will have the corresponding
TOC template included, so you can browse through the book content.
See, for example, the Administration Guide:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Administration_Guide
that uses the following template as TOC:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Template:Documentation/AdminGuideTOC/v2
This TOC template itself is based on a "MasterTOC" template that
handles all the formatting stuff, so that creation of a new
TOC for a different book is as straightforward as possible.
The ultimate goal would be to add a button to the TOC that allows
a user to export the contents of that book to either ODF or PDF
and download the result.
PDF would allow for direct printout, ODF would allow for
editorial or redactional postprocessing.
The steps required to do that (as I identified them) include:
* Compiling a list (and sequence) of wiki pages that make
up a book. This is done using the info in the TOC template.
Note that the headings and wiki pages referenced therein
can occur in different levels. Subchapters are enclosed in divs
that allow us to dynamically expand and collapse the subchapters,
for example:
* Chapter 1
* Chapter 2
<div>
* Chapter 2-1
* Chapter 2-2
<div>
* Chapter 2-2-1
* Chapter 2-2-2
</div>
* Chapter 2-3
</div>
* Chapter 3
* Chapter 4
would correspond to a chapter hierarchy like this:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 2-1
Chapter 2-2
Chapter 2-2-1
Chapter 2-2-2
Chapter 2-3
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
All of these would be separate wiki pages.
* Resolving all transcluded text
All text that is transcluded must be resolved
* Adjusting the heading levels inside these wiki pages. Since
they all are independent pages, the heading levels may need
adjustments. For example, if all wiki pages by default start
with a h2, the heading levels for subchapters need to be
decreased to produce a correct hierarchy in the book. IN the
example above, that would mean:
CHAPTER HEADING LEVEL ALIGNMENT
Chapter 1 h2 -> h2 (unchanged)
Chapter 2 h2 -> h2 (unchanged)
Chapter 2-1 h2 -> h3 (add 1 level)
Chapter 2-2 h2 -> h3 (add 1 level)
Chapter 2-2-1 h2 -> h4 (add 2 levels)
Chapter 2-2-2 h2 -> h4 (add 2 levels)
Chapter 2-3 h2 -> h3 (add 1 level)
Chapter 3 h2 -> h2 (unchanged)
Chapter 4 h2 -> h2 (unchanged)
* Including all images
* Converting from wiki text to ODF or PDF
The conversion to PDF could use either an XML format
and XSL-FO, or any other mechanism. We could also look
into using ODF as output format and then converting
to PDF using the OOo API. In this case we would probably
try to have an Office instance running permanently to avoid
performance issues due to startup latency.
* OS Requirement
The wiki runs on Solaris x86, so all tools used should be
available for Solaris.
If performance allows, this could be implemented as a
mediawiki extension in PHP. Otherwise we could look into
a CGI addition that runs periodically.
This is a first list of requirements, I hope that sets the
stage sufficiently for now. Let me know if you need more
information. When Clayton is back, we can get into more
deep a discussion.
I really appreciate your offer to help here, Pranav!
Frank
On 12/7/07, Frank Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi Pranav,
Sir,
don't call me Sir, I'm Frank :-)
I will be working on the mediawiki => pdf/odf integration in the
HackCenter today!! See you there when you are free.!!
Wow! That's fast! Unfortunately, I won't be there.
I'll send you more info next week.
Cheers
Frank
--
Frank Peters, Documentation Project Co-Lead
The OOo Documentation Project:
SIGN UP - PARTICIPATE - CONTRIBUTE
IT'S FREE! NO OBLIGATIONS!
http://documentation.openoffice.org
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation
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