Help-to-Wiki

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Winsteps
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Help-to-Wiki

Unread post by Winsteps »

Has anyone done a Help-to-Wiki export?

Any advice on how to do it, or which Wiki software to use or to avoid?

Tim: this could be a great feature to add to H&M (or to document if it is already there)
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Winsteps
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Unread post by Winsteps »

The Perl routine - html2wiki - works well for converting HTML to many Wiki formats. Several blogs provide useful guidance to using it.

And it looks like the process can be reversed with DokuWiki2HtmlHelp.exe

Importing the resulting .chm file into HM completes the cycle.

This may decide us on using DokuWiki.

Tim: how about adding Wikis to the publishing and importing options?
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Wikis are something we have been looking at very seriously for quite a while, the problems involved are anything but trivial, however. The main issue is transparent round-tripping -- if you are using an "export" format like HTML (i.e. a variant of Webhelp) you have a serious problem with re-importing any changes made by users working on the Wiki from the web. There are a lot of capabilities in HM that a Wiki can't support, which would turn the Wiki into a "stripping filter" that would take things out when you re-imported. Then there is the whole issue of synchronizing the Wiki with the main project -- if you allow open editing in the Wiki, even for a closed group of users, you are immediately going to have synch problems between the online version and the HM version.

All these considerations were one of the main driving forces behind the development of the new XML format for Help & Manual 5, which will eventually be able to offer something much, much better than a common or garden Wiki. The project data in a HM5 project is actually a single stream of data which goes through what is known as a "data abstraction" layer before it is written to wherever you want to write it -- this is the real innovation in HM5, even though it is still completely invisible for ordinary users (and it was also responsible for the majority of the work involved in this version). At the moment it is written to XML files but that is only because that is the current filter that is strapped onto the abstraction layer. It would be just as possible to write the data directly to a database -- for example an online MySQL database.

Then things start getting really interesting: Because then you can have a web front end accessing and displaying the same data that you are working on with Help & Manual. No more synch problems, no need for import and export, all that falls away because the authors working in the web interface are working on the same data that the authors using Help & Manual are accessing -- synching conflicts are then controlled by the same multi-user editing mechanisms that are used now. As far as Help & Manual is concerned there's no difference.

This is all still a little in the future, but that is where things are going in the long run... 8)
lkron
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Any updates on H&M with a Wiki feature

Unread post by lkron »

Hi,

Glad to read about the data abstraction layer and future support for Wikis. As Tim's response above was written about 16 months ago are there any updates, such as, can this be made to work in H&M Pro v5.3, or any rough timeframes on a future version with this feature that can be shared with the public?

Thanks,
Larry
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Tim Green
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Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Larry,

This has been pushed backwards a little because we have been working on other things. It's still on the books but I can't provide a time frame at the moment, sorry... :)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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KenHerman
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Re: Help-to-Wiki

Unread post by KenHerman »

Seeing as it has been a long time since there were any updates on this subject - has there been any progress on this feature (or a similar feature) being implemented? Or, has it been dropped completely?
Also, I would like to hear the current thoughts (if they have changed) about H&M as it relates to wiki's in general.

I, for one, would really, really like to see this type of concept become a standard part of H&M.

In my opinion, something like the previous thoughts (from Tim) would expand the capabilities of H&M exponentially. I can foresee opening H&M to web collaboration and web specific publishing with collaborative end user (or co-producer) interaction. Also, it would expand H&M to do so much more than just use templates to produce output that needs to be pushed to the web via ftp.
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Tim Green
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Re: Help-to-Wiki

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Ken,

This is still on the radar but there is not any specific development going forward on it at the moment. It always comes back to the same basic issue: You need to be able to integrate the content added online into your projects, otherwise you get a chaotic collection of forked versions of the material and that defeats the purpose of the exercise. However, to be able to do that the project needs to be stored directly in an online database, and that, in turn, is a huge undertaking. :?
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Mike Linacre
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Re: Help-to-Wiki

Unread post by Mike Linacre »

Tim writes: "You need to be able to integrate the content added online into your projects"

Tim, an automated system to do this would be wonderful, but far beyond what I need. My focus is on user feedback on individual help pages, as well as user input to improve each page. The wiki would assist with updating the Help files, and would restart with each new official edition of the Help files.
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Tim Green
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Re: Help-to-Wiki

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mike,
Mike Linacre wrote:Tim, an automated system to do this would be wonderful, but far beyond what I need. My focus is on user feedback on individual help pages, as well as user input to improve each page. The wiki would assist with updating the Help files, and would restart with each new official edition of the Help files.
That is already possible with user comments, which actually survive recompiles and re-uploads as long as you don't change the topic IDs. In the WebHelp Premium Pack skins you can choose between three commenting systems: The free and public Disqus and IntenseDebate systems, with the comments hosted on their servers, or the commercial XComment Pro system, which you can host on your own PHP server, either on the Internet or a local intranet (Disqus and IntenseDebate only work on the Internet, not on intranets).
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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KenHerman
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Re: Help-to-Wiki

Unread post by KenHerman »

I tend to agree with Mike.

It would be nice to have a complete online wiki that directly feeds back into your H&M project. But, yes, that is a big undertaking.
it would seem to be more practical, as an initial and easier offering, to take or reject wiki feedback, rolling it back into your project in a controlled manner. Probably on a page by page basis, that ultimately generates the "final" xml, which is then returned to the "master" H&M project. At which point a new, released, standard version of the page could then be re-distributed via H&M. And, the process continues.

if needed - a diff system could be implemented (like svn's, or other version control software) to resolve conflicts, when merging the "final" xml back into H&M. But, in the end (like software development) there would be only one "real" version of the xml project file - that is maintained in the H&M project (the repository).

Another quick thought - I can visualize this being done as a template. similar to what is done now, but H&M generating the wiki (web) functionality along with the actual project data (the help pages) to be distributed to the (intra)internet.

There are examples of open source wiki projects now that work using an xml driven back-end - not a MySql etc. back-end. So, using the H&M project xml (or a controlled, generated variation) as a page driver would not be unprecedented.

Also, if historical change information needs to be maintained, that could be done using an associated (but different) xml file that is both maintained by H&M and distributed with the project.

IMHO, this kind of functionality would be a huge step forward for H&M. And, I would gladly pay for an upgrade to the product which added these types of features.

Just my thoughts...
Ken Herman
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