I am trying to setup a multilingual encyclopedia (4 languages), where I can have both:
Articles that are translations of other languages, and
Articles that are in a specific language only.
As the wiki grows, I understand that the content of each language can vary.
However, I want to be able to work as fluently as possible between languages.
I checked this article, dating back to 2012, which has a comment from Tgr that basically condemns both solutions.
I also checked this Mediawiki Help Article, but it gives no explanation about the differences between both systems.
My questions are:
1- what is the preferred option now for a multilingual wiki environment that gives the most capabilities and best user experience, given that some of the languages I want are right to left, and some are left to right.
So I want the internationalization of category names, I need to link the categories their corresponding translations, and want users to see the interface in the language that the article is written in.
So Basically as if I have 4 encyclopedias, but the articles are linked to their corresponding translations.
2- Which system would give me a main page per language? So the English readers would see an English homepage, and the French readers see a French homepage..etc?
EDIT:
I have a dedicated server, so the limitation of shared hosting is not there.
Thank you very much.
The Translate extension is meant for maintaining identical translations and tracking up-to-date status while other solutions (interwiki links, Wikibase, homegrown language templates) typically just link equivalent pages together. Translate is useful for things like documentation, but comes with lots of drawbacks (for example, WYSIWYG editing becomes pretty much impossible and even source editing requires very arcane syntax). It's best used for content which is created once and then almost never changes.
You cannot get internationalized category names in a single wiki as far as I know. (Maybe if you wait a year or so... there is ongoing work to fix that, by more powerful Wikibase integration.) Large multi-language wikis like Wikimedia Commons just do that manually (create a separate category page for each category in each language).
Related
I'm considering using mediawiki as my company's internal knowledge base and am trying to understand how to build out effective team sections. Unfortunately, I'm not finding much information on this.
Ideally we'd have a separate knowledge base sections for devs, product, design and HR; all in the same system with the ability to cross-link. Each of these sections would be able to have it's own landing page and we could search for content specifically within that section.
It looks like using categories might work, but initially this feels clunky and I'm not sure if it provides the level of hierarchy I'm looking for. I would love to get your ideas and any links to examples that have done this well.
Thank you!
If by segregation you mean limited visibility (ie. team members generally shouldn't be able to see other members' content), then MediaWiki is probably not the right choice for you as it does not have granular read access control.
If you are simply looking for content organization, namespaces provide an ugly but easy way of partitioning (almost everything supports filtering by namespace). Categories are more elegant but not so well integrated - you can filter search results by category but you can't do it for most other things like recent changes or user contributions.
I was wondering if anyone knew of an application that would take a GEDCOM genealogy file and convert it to HTML format for viewing and publishing on the web. I'd like to have separate html files for each individual and perhaps additional files for other content as well. I know there are some tools out there but I was wondering if anyone used any tools and could advise on this. I'm not sure what format to look for such applications. They could be Python or php files that one can edit, or even JavaScript (maybe) or just executable files.
The next issue might be appropriate for a topic in itself. Export of GEDCOM to RDF. My interest here would be to align the information with specific vocabularies, such as BIO or REL which both are extended from FOAF.
Thanks,
Bruce
Like Rob Kam said, Ged2Html was the most popular such program for a long time.
GRAMPS can also create static HTML sites and has the advantage of being free software and having a native XML format which you could easily modify to fit your needs.
Several years ago, I created a simple Java program to turn gedcom into xml. I then used xslt to generate html and rdf. The html I generate is pretty rudimentary, so it would probably be better to look elsewhere for that, but the rdf might be useful to you:
http://jay.askren.net/Projects/SemWeb/
There are a number of these. All listed at http://www.cyndislist.com/gedcom/gedcom-to-web-page-conversion/
Ged2html used to be the most popular and most versatile, but is now no longer being developed. It's an executable, with output customisable through its own scripting syntax.
Family Historian http://www.family-historian.co.uk will create exactly what you are looking for, eg one file per person using the built in Web Site creator. As will a couple of the other Major genealogy packages. I have not seen anything for the RDF part of your question.
I have since tried to produce a Genealogy application using Semantic MediaWiki - MediaWiki, the software behind Wikipedia, and Semantic MediaWiki includes various extensions related to the Semantic Web. I thought it is very easy to use with the forms and the ability to upload a GEDCOM but some feedback from people into genealogy said that it appeared too technical and didn't seem to offer anything new.
So, now the issue is whether to stay with MediaWiki and make it more user friendly or create an entirely new application that allows for adding and updating data in a triple store as well as displaying. I'm not sure how to generate a family tree graphical view of the data, like on sites like ancestry.com, where one can click on a box to see details about the person and update that info or one could click on a right or left arrow around a box to navigate the tree. The data comes from SPARQL queries sent to the data set/triple store both when displaying the initial view and when navigating the tree, where an Ajax call is needed to get more data.
Bruce
I develop an online, Flash-based multiplayer game. It is a complex game, and requires a lot of documentation to fully explain it to our users. Ideally, I would like to find MySQL-based wiki software that can provide these editable documentation pages outside of Flash (in the HTML realm) but also within Flash for convenience, and so that players can refer to the information without interrupting their game or having to switch back-and-forth between browser tabs. I am expecting that I would need to do a lot of the work on the Flash side myself, as far as formatting, for example, but I would like to feel comfortable in querying the wiki's database to get info directly. I guess this means that I need a wiki that is structured relatively "flat" or intuitively so that I can do things like:
Run a MySQL query that returns a list of all the articles (their titles and IDs) in the wiki
For each article ID in the wiki, return the associated content
This may mean that I have to limit the kinds of formatting I put into the wiki -- things like tables would probably be omitted since they would be very difficult, if not impossible, for me to do on the Flash side. And that is fine!
Basically I am just looking for suggestions for wiki software that is pretty easy to use, but mostly is technically simple enough on the back-end that interfacing with it directly via MySQL is not difficult. When interfacing with the database directly, I only need to READ data. Any time the wiki would be edited or added to would be done via the wiki's actual front-end application.
Thanks for any suggestions!
MediaWiki is the best-known and best-supported MySQL-based Wiki, used for plenty of complex game documentation projects like MinecraftWiki. The database is not all that simple, but it's well documented and basic read operations aren't too hard. For example, here's how to fetch the current content of the page "MyPage":
SELECT old_text FROM page,revision,text WHERE page.page_title="MyPage" AND
page.page_id=revision.rev_page AND revision.rev_text_id=text.old_id;
(And yes, old_text is the current content of the page. Don't ask me why!)
Your main problem will be figuring out how to parse MediaWiki markup, there are plenty of parsers for it but I'm not aware of anything that would work in Flash.
I'm thinking of the way I'd generate a university newspaper both in PDF and HTML (a website) where every news would contain picture(s) and wonder if there any tools to approach this problem declaratively so that unexperienced users would prepare structured data (text + pictures) and get PDF and website on output on their own with no programmers' intervention. I suspect it can be some sort of XSL-FO, XML editing/processing software.
P. S. A free tool(s) would be a best solution.
Thank you.
For this, a very good approach would be to use DocBook
to write your articles, than let the tools generate HTML and PDFs you need - with just some tuning of the look and feel output from your side.
For DocBook there are many available tools, but a very good one that is free for open source and academics is XMLMind
If your articles are more technical oriented, than DocBook is the quasi-standard (even many publishing houses like O'Reilly use it)
Of course, in the "pure" academics domain, LaTex is quite the standard (and allows to have output in allot of formats), but requires quite allot to learn it, and there are no true WYSIWYG tools to write the articles. If you intend to send the articles to some research papers too, than they are very glad to accept your LaTex input.
we (swansea University) used a content management system to achive this - DotNetNuke in our instance.
We wanted multipage newletter where a summary on the newletter and click more for the fuller article. The content management system allowed normal users to use the software to construct the newletter, they simple created a new child site every month.
We had the newletter emailed out, we we simply grabbed the html from the main page and sent to a distribution list.
Something worth considering - cost = £0
The obvious way of doing it would be to generate all your content in XML, then use either a commercial XSL-FO processor for PDF, or apache FOP to generate the PDF, and whatever your XSL processor is to generate the html.
Very similar to Simon Thompson's answer:
You can use Drupal and its print module.
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I've used a WordPress blog and a Screwturn Wiki (at two separate jobs) to store private, company-specific KB info, but I'm looking for something that was created to be a knowledge base. Specifically, I'd like to see:
Free/low cost
Simple method for users to subscribe to KB (or just sections) to get updates
Ability to do page versioning/audit changes
Limit access to certain pages for certain users
Very simple method of posting/editing articles
Very simple method of adding images to articles
Excellent (fast, accurate) searching abilities
Ability to rate and comment on articles
I liked using the Wordpress blog because it allowed me to use Live Writer to add/edit articles and images, but it didn't have page versioning (that I could see).
I like using Screwturn wiki because of it's ability to track article versions, and I like it's clean look, but some non-technical people balk at the input and editing.
I second Luke's answer.
I can Recommend Confluence and here is why:
I tested extensively many commercial and free Wiki based solutions. Not a single one is a winner on all accounts, including confluence. Let me try to make your quest a little shorter by summarizing what I have learned to be a pain and what is important:
WYSIWYG is a most have feature for the Enterprise. A wiki without it, skip it
Saying that, in reality, WYSIWYG doesn't work perfectly. It is more of a feature you must have to get the casual users not be afraid of the monster, and start using it. But you and anyone that wants to seriously create content, will very quickly get used to the wiki markup. it is faster and more reliable.
You need good permissions controls (who can see, edit etc' a page). confluence has good, but I have my complaints (to complicated to be put here)
You will want a good export feature. Most will give you a single page "PDF" export, but you need much more. For example, lets say you have an FAQ, you want to export the entire FAQ right? will that work?
Macros: you want a community creating macros. You asked for example about the ability to rate pages, here is a link to a Macro for Confluence that lets you do that
Structure: you want to be able to say that a page is a child of a different page, and be able to browse the data. The wikipedia model, of orphaned pages with no sturcture will not work in the Enterprise. (think FAQ, you want to have a hierarchy no?)
Ability to easily attache picture to be embedded in the body of the page/article. In confluence, you need to upload the image and then can embed it, it could be a little better (CTR+V) but I guess this is easy enough for 80% of the users.
At the end of the day, remember that a Wiki will be valuable to you the more flexible it is. It needs to be a "blank" canvas, and your imagination is then used to "build" the application. In Confluence, I found 3 different "best practices" on how to create a FAQ. That means I can implement MANY things.
Some examples (I use my Wiki for)
FAQ: any error, problem is logged. Used by PS and ENG. reduced internal support time dramatically
Track account status: I implemetned sophisticated "dashboard" that you can see at a glance which customer is at what state, the software version they have, who in the company 'owns" the custoemr etc'
Product: all documentation, installation instructions, the "what's new" etc
Technical documentation, DB structure and what the tables mean
HR: contact list, Document repository
My runner up (15 month ago) was free Deki_Wiki, time has passed, so I don't know if this would be still my runner up.
good luck!
I've also been investigating wiki software for use as a KB, but it is tricky to find something that is easy to use for non-technical people. There are many wikis that attempt to provide WYSIWYG editing, but most of the software I've found generates nasty inefficient html markup from the WYSIWYG editor.
One notable exception to this is Confluence which generates wiki syntax from a WYSIWYG editor. This still isn't perfect (show me a WYSIWYG editor that is) but is a pretty good compromise between retaining simple wiki syntax for those who like it and allowing non-technical users to contribute content. The only problem is that Confluence isn't free ($1,200 for 25 user license).
Edit: I also tried DekiWiki and while the UI is nice it doesn't seem to be quite ready for primetime (suffers terribly from the bad WYSIWYG output disease mentioned above). Also seems like they lack direction as there are so many different ways of accomplishing the same task.
Cerberus - it's more a full featured Help Desk/Issue Tracking system but it has a nice KB solution built in. It can be free but they do have a low cost pay version that is also very good.
Personally I use MediaWiki for this purpose. I've tried a number of other free and paid wikis (including Confluence) and have always been impressed with MediaWiki's simplicity and ease of use.
I have MediaWiki installed on a thumb drive (using XAMPP from PortableApps), which I use mostly as a personal knowledge base/code snippet repository. I can take it with me wherever I go, and view/edit it from any computer I'm using.
I think Drupal is a very possible choice. It has a lot of built-in support for book-type information capturing.
And there is a rich collection of user generated modules which you can use to enhance the features.
I think it has almost all the features you ask for out of the box.
Drupal CMS Benefits
We've been using a combination of
TWiki
OpenGrok for the codebase
usenet
LotusNotes based system
As long as there is a google search appliance pointed at these things I think it's ok to have any or many versions as long as people use them