Proposal talk:Endorse OpenDocument format or XWiki OfficeImporter
The best way to endorse OpenDocument (which is already supported for uploading by MediaWiki) is to build an import/export tool wiki sintax <-> odt. You can imagine a mw:Extension:Collection which can export to odt, and an improved export to wiki tool in OpenOffice. --Nemo 15:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
- What would OpenDocument format be good for? --213.196.244.189 17:05, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
Permitted file types seem to be png, gif, jpg, jpeg, xcf, pdf, mid, ogg, ogv, svg, djvu, oga. Not on this list are open document formats such as odt ods odp - is there any reason why not? Jtneill 16:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Implementation issues
There is no particular reason why one couldn't combine XWiki and MediaWiki. Consequently the XWiki OfficeImporter could be used as a MediaWiki extension or as an external process under the control of a MediaWiki extension (e.g. PHP/Java Bridge or Project Zero), which may be a trivial statement for programmers but probably not for everybody else. --Fasten 17:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
LaTeX import/export
A LaTeX import/export filter for wiki text might be a good idea. XWiki has a useful infrastructure for additional import/export formats. --Fasten 09:52, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- Mapping the LaTeX document structure and LaTeX tables seems sufficiently simple. The import of LaTeX documents could, of course, primarily focus on the subset of LaTeX commands that can be exported (possibly retaining other commands as comments). The commands \part{} and \chapter{} could allow optional import as one wiki page per part or chapter. --Fasten 16:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
- One could compile LaTeX with GCJ and allow the creation of LaTeX commands with Java classes, which would keep it portable but would allow to embed HTML code rendered with HTMLDocument and SVG rendered with JSVGCanvas in LaTeX boxes. --Fasten 13:42, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
- See also: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wiki2LaTeX/Documentation/Extensions_to_Mediawiki (beta version)
XML
One could also specify a wiki text/LaTeX mixture (the Wiki syntax already includes some AMS-LaTeX markup, which means this is already the case to a degree), specify a fixed mapping to XML and use Apache FOP to print the result. LaTeX alone appears to have some rendering limitations I would like to avoid (e.g. there probably is a way to move a box sideways and into the margin but it doesn't seem to be sufficiently easy to do). --Fasten 13:27, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
- One could use Apache FOP to generate OpenDocument format, which would allow further modification with KOffice or OpenOffice before printing (It's on the http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/0.95/output.html#wishlist). With XSL Formatting Objects one should be able to get better results than currently with mw:Extension:Collection (but see Drawbacks of XSL-FO).
- One would probably want to add a way to get formatting effects that depend on knowing the page position relationship of two formatting objects (which would be useful for references within a Wikibook: a near reference might otherwise result in a \pageref footnote referring to the page it occured on). --Fasten 11:03, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
- Now an independent proposal: Proposal:Specify intermediate format for printing Wikibooks that can be rendered with Apache FOP