wikis (was Re: [BBLISA] Suggestions for a documentation system)

[miah]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 03:31:42PM -0400, John Stoffel wrote:
> Mark> Most wikis will let you cutnpaste.  copy the file to an emacs
> Mark> buffer, edit, and paste back?  TWiki even has a "raw text"
> Mark> display button for the cut and you can click "edit" to paste it
> Mark> back.
> 
> Which completely obviates the need for a wiki, since I can just open
> an emacs buffer (emacs is always running for me...) and just write a
> note and store it in a directory. 


Great, is this documentation for you, or to assist your
company/coworkers should you be hit by a bus?

> Mark> It's not elegant.  But then, neither is keeping all your
> Mark> documentation in unprotected flat files.  Effective (in a
> Mark> limited way) yes.  Elegant?
> 
> And what is a wiki but a bunch of files?  And how well protected are
> they?  If I wanted, I could do RCS/CVS and checkout/checkin my files
> when I edit them.  Not that hard to setup either.  

Again, docs for you or them?  THen again, setting up a wiki isn't hard
either, neither is writing a little script that will push your buffer to
a http post to update the damn thing.

> The point I was trying to make is that HTML is NOT a good interactive
> system where you need to do data entry.  Especially data entry in
> large volume.  

Nope, but name something that is.  Please, I'd like for you to name a
easily accessable open format used to publish documentation that doesn't
require paying for software to view or edit.  I think HTML is about as
good as it gets in this department because surely I can't expect my
manager to cvs checkout my docs in .txt format to see how I configured a
server.  But I can easily point him to a URL thats up to date, and
protected by a ACL to prevent unwanted users from modifying or viewing
it.

-miah