[SoCoSA/discuss] db (etc) --> Wiki or...?

[Eric Eisenhart]

On Wed, Jun 28, 2006 at 04:46:11PM -0700, Steve S. wrote:
> One of the things I'm considering is converting it ALL to a Wiki (or
> maybe something else, if folks have other suggestions).  I've used a
> few wiki's, but never implemented one.  Does anyone know of:
> (a) data-import tools (e.g. FMP --> Wiki) to make the Grand Changeover?
> (b) a Wiki that includes wysiwyg features, so that people don't have
> to manually markup their data on an ongoing basis?

We've been using a Wiki for handling documentation in my department at work. 
Been pretty happy with it.  Don't know of any specific conversion tools, but
most of them can accept raw HTML.  We didn't do a conversion of that sort
for the most part; our other documentation was already in HTML on a web
server, so the two live side by side -- some stuff (automatically generated
stuff, a bunch of PDFs from a vendor, etc.) is easier to handle without the
Wiki.

Specifically, we're using TWiki.  http://twiki.org/  We're still on an older
release, but the latest has a (beta) WYSIWYG editor.  We're a sysadmin
department and the Wiki-style markup is reasonably easy.  I do like the
markup syntax of MediaWiki more, but TWiki has a lot of useful plugins
available, more options on how authentication is handled, etc...  (we've got
the web server already set up to do authentication against LDAP, so TWiki is
set up to use that authentication).  Shouldn't be too hard to import things
into TWiki automatically, though; it handles stuff via a bunch of files and
RCS behind the scenes -- just have to have a way to make the filenames
happen right I suspect.

Especially useful for things that multiple people might want to edit.  With
uploaded HTML it's a pain; with the Wiki it's locked while you edit it.  The
latest version has some sort of new editing model that instead lets both
edit at once and makes one person resolve any conflicts that might occur --
haven't tried tthat out, though.
-- 
Eric Eisenhart <freiheit at SoCoSA.org>
SoCoSA Founder and President
IRC: freiheit on irc.socosa.org
AIM: falschfreiheit