Wikka Filters

Importing/exporting from Wikka to other formats

See also: WikkaToPDF
 


I was thinking that one of the conditions that might allow a wiki engine to survive in the long run, besides WikkaInternationalization i18n and l10n might be its external integration with existing document formats.
Many people I've been talking to about Wikka and wikis in general were disappointed by the fact that "they couldn't copy and paste formatted text from their favorite word processor" (I omit the name of the word processor) or were reluctant to learn a new syntax.
Giving the user the ability to safely import an RTF file (maybe passing through HTML) might drastically improve the visibility of our project. I know that Andrea's uniwakka already allows you to export to LaTeX and OpenOffice, and import/export bibtex files - which I find just great if you already use LaTex and OpenOffice. But for the average user (think of people willing to use a wiki as the engine to run their site and with a lot of content already available in DOC or RTF format) non only RTF might be more relevant, but the ability to import and not only export becomes crucial.

Ideas for possible import filters


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Ideas for possible export filters


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Does anyone know about existing rtf2wiki projects or, more generally, projects of filters to convert wiki syntax to and from existing formats?
Maybe a basic action to import an HTML document without bothering with the source code (many users don't even know where to look to find the source of a HTML document or do not know that there is a source) could also be of some help.

Your thoughts?


-- DarTar

document_wakka.dot


Below is a link to a macro/template to convert a document Microsoft© Word 97 or Word 2000 into the Wakka format. It was obtained (as was most of this text, in the French) from the wikini site.

A work of adaptation by David Delon, starting from Macro_word.dot.

Copyright © 2002, David Delon distributed under licence LPG.
Copyright © 2002, Alexis Dupont-Rock distributed under licence LPG. (might be translation from french of GPL).


INSTRUCTIONS: Copy "document_wakka.dot" to the directory in which templates are for your version of Microsoft Word. Often these are found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\OtherDocuments or C:\Windows\Application Data\Mircosoft\models. (Look for the Normal.dot file to find the exact location).

To use it, start Word.
Choose File->New->Other Documents(Or General)->Document_wakka.dot.
Type text using the styles suggested: normal, list, underlined , bold, title 1, title 2 and title 3.
To generate text into the Wakka format in a new document click on the symbol W! beside the file icon.

Limitations: It works, but the instruction code that is generated when the macro is activated is in French. It means "The transformed text was copied to the Clipboard: You can place it in wikka using paste (Ctrl-V). Good Luck!" However I have no insights into how to edit this into English in the .dot file (my attempts failed miserably).

You can obtain the file here: document_wakka.dot (right-click to save the file)

--GmBowen

There is also WinWord2WikkaWikiAction. Dunno if it's the same macro as above or not. In english though. :)



Some references on importing/exporting RTF






CategoryDevelopmentHandlers CategoryDevelopmentArchitecture
Comments
Comment by AndreaRossato
2004-11-01 19:16:34
UniWakka comes also with an OpenOffice export filter. That is to say, you can use OpenOffice Writer to write your files and then export them to the UniWakka file format.
This way you can also import into OpenOffice your .doc and .rtf files and then export them to UniWakka.

It should be very easy to adapt that filter to support the WikkaWiki formattings, since UniWakka and Wikka share the same ancestor....;-)
Comment by JamesMcl
2004-11-02 12:44:57
There is a class called FPDF which allows you to create Adobe pdf files from content extracted from a database. By adding a link to the wikka header you should be able to post the page id or tag to the class.

[[http://fpdf.org/ FPDF Class]]
Comment by PolVazo
2005-01-19 18:58:24
http://www.htmlarea.com/ might be part of the answer. It has been used by a Wakka mod (was at http://www.nivel0.net/WakkaHtmlArea) to give a full HTML editor (like an advanced WikiEdit). I tried it and it was pretty good. The best thing about HTMLarea is that you can copy and paste say an Excel table in to the wakka page and formatting is retained! Not sure if this now works in Mozilla/Firefox as the version I used was for IE only.
Comment by DocXoc
2005-10-20 14:17:46
RTF import would be a great feature. Wikis in general are fantastic tools. They are an elegant solution for the cognoscenti who grok them enough to adapt. They could and would be much more widely used if they adapted more to 'everyday' users. That essentially means doing everything expected while not requiring a new user to learn anything - and its surprising how we forget how much we had to learn to use any software. Its hard to achieve this which is why there are so few truly great applications out there.
Comment by DarTar
2005-10-20 14:48:22
DocXoc, you might be interested in this OpenOffice2Wiki converter:
http://uniwakka.sourceforge.net/OpenOffice2UniWakka

Since Uniwakka and Wikka use the same syntax (with some minor exceptions, like table support) you should be able to use this filter to import RTF into Wikka.
Comment by ChrisH
2005-12-16 05:33:26
A way to add a button to a page that would allow that page to be downloaded as RTF text would great.
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