Re: [Gnumed-devel] Re: Gnumed documentation

[Jim Busser]

On Mar 24, 2004, at 7:30 AM, David Grant wrote:

> Jim Busser wrote:
> > > > Before a public release, either find a way to extract the contents 
> > > > from wiki
> > > Once the set of html pages is collected in preparation for an 
> > > "updated public release" perhaps 
> > > http://www.abc.se/~m9339/prog/html2sgml.html
> > David had you discerned any easy way to obtain / save / write all of 
> > the wiki pages into their html form?
> I basically had to view the wiki pages in Mozilla and do a Save As...  
> HTML from the file menu.  So it is fairly annoying...
> David

Well, that IS a big pain.

On Mar 24, 2004, at 5:56 AM, Karsten Hilbert wrote:
> > reason to put [the manuals] in the CVS
> It's a text file and is being developed by several people over
> time. Hence it lends itself to version management. Hence put
> it in CVS. Seems entirely obvious to me.

I had overlooked that CVS provides the means for collaboration where 
each user works on their local offline copy, then uploads whereas the 
wiki requires that you be offline (I always have easy web access). Of 
course, using CVS someone then has to RESOLVE conflicting diffs, unless 
people are working on separate sections. To write in plain text does 
require all formatting be added later.

I just wanted to be more certain given I have been spending and hope to 
spend more time on this. For the manuals the decision can maybe better 
wait until it is time to write in a concentrated way. In preparation 
for that, a wiki could be useful not for detailed content, but for 
people to collaborate on pre-planning the chapter / section / 
subsection structure to be used. Then, once a plan for dividing the 
work has been achieved (it could be separately roadmapped on the wiki) 
the SINGLE html outline could be saved from the wiki by each writer, 
and its headings used to guide the preservation of the chapter / 
section / subsection structure. If it is hard to write in SGML might 
people write in something simpler (word processors will output html) 
and then a subset of people upgrade it to SGML.