On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 10:52:45PM +0100, Wookey wrote: > Does anyone have any suggestions for how to keep the benefits of > wikified documentation, yet still be able to produce standalone docs > in PDF or whatever form? I have used Docbook (SGML, now XML is > preferred) to easily produce docs in multiple output forms: > (HTML/PDF/DOC etc), but I don't know how to integrate that with wiki > markup, or even if it is usefully possible. Somehow having the > original exmaple files and diagrams around so they can easily be > updated would also be good.
There are various conversion filters around which allow you to convert various wiki markup styles to/from other formats (just google for the wiki software name and the format you want to convert to to find some). So you could probably keep documentation in a wiki format so it's easy for anyone to edit and just find (or even write) filters to convert it to all the formats you want (or just to something like docbook which can then be converted to those formats). After all, wiki markup generally provides most of what you really need from a markup language, is easier to learn and less intrusive than docbook, and some wikis allow macros so it can probably be extended to cover any special requirements. Cheers, Olly