Re: migrating the NetBSD users guide to the wiki

[John Nemeth <jnemeth%cue.bc.ca@localhost>]

On May 4,  2:03pm, Sevan Janiyan wrote:
} On 04/05/2019 10:15, Leonardo Taccari wrote:
} > Yes, while that's probably okay for most of htdocs I think that's
} > a big limitation of eventually using wikisrc for the guide.
} 
} In the "guide history" on the wiki:
} "In 2012/2013, the guide was converted in a Google Code-In task by
} Mingzhe Wang (wmzhere) to Markdown. In early 2013, it was integrated to
} the NetBSD wiki, along with removing old chapters, restricting numbering
} schemes and some reformulations.

     I'm aware that it was copied to the wiki.  That was a mistake.

} You can still get the old version of the Guide, which is not maintained
} anymore." < last line links to the docbook copy

     Is it unmaintained?  I certainly don't pay attention to the
wiki version, and if I have an edit, it will be made to the htdocs
version.

} Somewhat ironic that the wiki version is now lagging behind, but I will
} address this by getting the wiki version of the guide up to date and
} start to add new content there.
} 
} Have you looked at this? https://wiki.netbsd.org/htdocs_migration/

     Who authored this?  Who approved it?  If it's not marked as
being an official document, somebody could just change it to exclude
the guides.

} > Yes, but right now it has something to do regarding the lower barrier.
} > ATM on wikisrc the contributor needs to fetch manually each wiki
} > page, keep it as .orig file and then share the patch.
} 
} I have asked admins@ & Joerg if there's any reason why this repo
} couldn't be mirrored on anoncvs/added to the conversion process.

     The repository could be mirrored.  I don't know about anoncvs
as that is a direct mirror of cvs and wikisrc is a totally separate
repository.  I'm also not sure how much sense it makes given the
ideas behind a wiki.  One of the major features that was used to
sell us the wiki is that the public would be able to make direct
contributions.  This still hasn't happened.

} > Apart lengthier tags I don't think editing XML is so much more
} > terrible than editing markdown.  www@ can also help to integrate
} > possible contributions in text format.
} 
} Opposing opinion, perhaps you can write the XML copy of the markdown
} articles instead and keep the two going side by side?

     This would be rather silly.  Database / information management 001:
never have the same information in multiple places without automatic
replication.  Doing so only leads to inconsistencies.  The docbook
version (stop saying XML, docbook isn't raw XML; even HTML is
derived from XML) can be automatically converted to markdown.  The
reverse isn't true as the conversion from docbook to markdown
involves information lossage.

}-- End of excerpt from Sevan Janiyan