Last modified: 2014-02-07 19:04:00 UTC

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Bug 4073 - Support exporting content in DocBook format
Support exporting content in DocBook format
Status: REOPENED
Product: MediaWiki extensions
Classification: Unclassified
Extensions requests (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Low enhancement with 1 vote (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
Depends on:
Blocks: Wikisource 61047
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2005-11-25 07:01 UTC by Mike L.
Modified: 2014-02-07 19:04 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description Mike L. 2005-11-25 07:01:04 UTC
It would be extremely useful if wikimedia could optionally support saving
contents natively in docbook format, that way it would become very easy to
support a wide range of output formats (PDF,HTML,XML,PS,LATEX etc.)-thus
implementing support for this request would basically also deal with related
requests such as: http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=474

In particular, this would seem like a natural and very worthwhile extensions to
WikiBooks.org, but other WikiMedia based projects would certainly also benefit
from such a possibility.

As far as I'm aware, there is currently only one single opensource package that
*attempts* to provide wiki functionality while saving the data natively in
docbook format: http://freshmeat.net/projects/doc-book/  (
http://doc-book.sourceforge.net/homepage/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/doc-book/ )

It would certainly be interesting to see this idea being pursued by the official
WikiMedia software.

Thanks for considering this request

regards

Mike
Comment 1 Mike L. 2006-06-19 21:17:04 UTC
Noticed this one, on the WikiMedia Soc page:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/wiki2xml/w2x.php
Comment 2 Siebrand Mazeland 2008-08-18 18:47:30 UTC
Mass compoment change: <some> -> Export/Import
Comment 3 Quim Gil 2013-04-18 04:51:44 UTC
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Collection exists and is enabled in some Wikimedia projects.
Comment 4 Nemo 2013-04-22 18:02:59 UTC
(In reply to comment #3)
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Collection exists and is enabled in
> some Wikimedia projects.

Collection doesn't really do this AFAIK: [[mw:Extension:XML_Bridge]] is supposed to; but it's marked experimental and I've never seen it in use, so I can't tell whether it's what requested here.
Comment 5 Quim Gil 2013-04-23 05:33:09 UTC
True. Regardless of what http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Collection says, when creating a collection in Wikibooks the option I got were PDF, OpenDocument, openZIM and ePub. 

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Book

Reopening and sorry for the confusion.

Then again... why is DocBook important? The reporter proposes it as a gateway to support PDF and other format with printing in mind. The Collections extension has solved the problem and now anybody can print and even publish a book with a few clicks.
Comment 6 Nemo 2013-04-23 06:34:01 UTC
DocBook is important for many reasons. The smartest (big) publishers are converting their traditional books to DocBook to have high-quality ebooks that can be converted in any format may arise in the next decades; wikis like userbase.kde.org convert their pages to DocBook format with some scripts for later reuse.

The problem with this is that wiki pages are like a low quality energy, which you convert to high quality energy i.e. DocBook with big losses and then becomes whatever you need... not so effective. Probably doesn't make sense if MediaWiki doesn't even have a concept of book in the first place; maybe GorillaWarfare has ideas on this.
Comment 7 Molly White 2013-04-23 11:51:27 UTC
DocBook is different from wikitext/HTML/etc. because its tags mark what the content is, not how it should be displayed. Instead of using, for example, ==Chapter== and <h1>Chapter</h1>, it uses <chapter>Chapter</chapter>. Then the formats to which it is later converted can decide how they want to display chapter titles, if at all, without having to hope that every == or <h1> denotes the beginning of a chapter. Nemo's energy analogy is apt.

I do believe that DocBook should be added as an exportation format, although I disagree that we need to wait for a book concept to be added. DocBook is no more exclusive to books than it is to technical documentation; Wikipedia articles can just as easily benefit from this format. That said, it might be wise to wait until a better book representation is created before putting too much effort into implementing this for Wikibooks/Wikisource.

I'll CC jeremyb on this -- he's discussed his interest in this becoming a feature, and may have some further input.
Comment 8 Dereckson 2014-02-07 18:31:02 UTC
Another scope of this bug is to solve a problem in the software documentation world.

DocBook is used for major products documentations (FreeBSD, PHP, OpenStack). These documentations projects could benefit a lot of a wiki to update the documentation.

A DocBook import/export isn't only useful for Wikisource, but for open source projects willing to allow any contributor to edit the documentation without edit a DocBook file, then a patch against the current documentation.
Comment 10 Nemo 2014-02-07 18:48:56 UTC
(In reply to comment #8)
> DocBook is used for major products documentations (FreeBSD, PHP, OpenStack).
> These documentations projects could benefit a lot of a wiki to update the
> documentation.

And to translate it with [[mw:Extension:Translate]] of course! We're sometimes asked to host such projects on translatewiki.net, if they could use their own wiki (maybe with a content model for each format?) Translate could be used directly.
Comment 11 Dereckson 2014-02-07 18:51:30 UTC
There are maybe some telepathy involved Quim, I were writing the bug 61047 to offer it as a GSoC project.

Nemo, er... could you discuss with SPQRobin and Romaine about the use of Translate extension on the Wikimedia Belgium wiki? The first thinks it's wonderful to translate full pages, the second thinks it's not intuitive at all  for full pages (but likes it on meta. to translate interfaces elements) and prefers /fr /nl pages.
Comment 12 Nemo 2014-02-07 19:04:00 UTC
(In reply to comment #11)
> Nemo, er... could you discuss with SPQRobin and Romaine about the use of
> Translate extension on the Wikimedia Belgium wiki?

I did many times and I think I'm more up to date than you on their problems with it, from what you write. :) But it's offtopic here.

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