[Bf-docboard] About MediaWiki and DocBook

[David Millet]

If I am understanding correctly, all your arguments seem to surround the
ease of moving content from mediawiki to print versus moving content
from docbook to print.  However, you do not address the documentation
issues that Stefano seemed to be interested in resolving when he
searched me out.  He appeared to be more concerned with the ease and
speed of creation and perfection of the documentation than with these
other issues you bring up.  He was also concerned with recruiting new
talent, which according to him, docbook does not facilitate.  Because of
the similarities between XML and HTML, as well as the flexibility
possible with the mediawiki project, I believe these things you mention
could easily become a non-issue.

If anyone would like to discuss what a wiki can and cannot do, come talk
with me in #wikiblender on irc.freenode.net ...  I'm not going to argue
any longer about whether or not documentation developed with the wiki
engine would be easily exportable in a format that would be printer
friendly, as I do not have the sort of experience to contend with you on
the matter.  You may want to consider the fact that the whole reason I'm
here on this list talking with you and everybody else is because Stefano
believed that a wiki was a viable solution and would not cause print
problems.  I'd be interested to hear how the content could easily go
from mediawiki to print, if any of you smart printers have some input.
If you have any questions for me, please contact me, I'm more than happy
to answer questions if I know the answers :D

David Millet

PS - one thing I thought was interesting is that the wiki can have an
author editable CSS page within the same wiki framework that would give
immediate live updates.  It's just a wiki page whose content is the
book's CSS; take a look at this example:
http://www.vrotvrot.com/blenderwiki/index.php/Test_Wiki_CSS_Page  .
Create an action to render_css, then point the wiki pages' CSS to that
page and you've got yourself simple-to-update, book-wide CSS.  Simple,
yet powerful.
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