Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 6, of wiki template articles and snippets)

A mapping effort chronicled in a blog is less than exciting to read. So let’s switch gears and lay some groundwork for the parser. We will use a Wikipedia article as the first test and as a guide for what parts of the markup to tackle firstly. Since wikis are moving targets, we will work… Continue reading Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 6, of wiki template articles and snippets)

Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 5, Still Mapping)

Initially I wanted to distinguish between parsing and mapping. But as I study MediaWiki markup, I am increasingly convinced the best approach is to map the markups and create a parsing algorithm based on that. I took a break from this series for some other posts. This is a late evening endeavor. So the pace… Continue reading Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 5, Still Mapping)

Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 4, Starting to Map MediaWiki Markup to Flare Topic XML)

Parsing the wiki markup for MediaWiki wikis is a challenge. There is not a markup spec to which to build a parser. But parsers exist. There would be no Wikipedia without one. The original plan for this blog series was to use an existing libary to parse wikitext. That may still be the solution. But… Continue reading Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 4, Starting to Map MediaWiki Markup to Flare Topic XML)

Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 3, Placeholder Flare Topics)

In the previous post about this effort, I discussed the MediaWiki API and how to create a Flare TOC from the response from an API call. The same approach is possible for the Flare topics. But since the wiki page content is not maintained as XML, the conversion is more complicated from wiki page to… Continue reading Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 3, Placeholder Flare Topics)

Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 2, make an API call and a Flare TOC)

To get the wiki pages, something has to make the API calls. A program is needed. I decided to build it rather than look for one that fits. But the plan was to use preexisting libraries to access the MediaWiki API if possible. I also decided to go with a Visual Basic project for this… Continue reading Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 2, make an API call and a Flare TOC)

Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 1, getting started)

I asked for suggestions for posts on the Users of MadCap Flare on Linkedin. The first one was to see content flow freely between Flare and a wiki. I’m not promising anything. But the suggestion is very good and it is worth a try. I saw some posts on MadCap Software Forums about this. It… Continue reading Flare to MediaWiki to Flare (part 1, getting started)