MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-01-12 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Open Office and Web Publishing
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Desktop
Publishing with OOo Writer and DokuWiki
Tuesday January 11, 2005 (08:00 AM GMT)
By: Dmitri Popov
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OpenOffice.org Writer offers a wide range of sophisticated tools for
creating complex documents such as manuals and technical documentation.
However, when it comes to publishing the finished results online, your
options are rather limited. You can, of course, use OOo Web to convert
existing files into HTML, but you might want a more powerful and
flexible tool to maintain the published documents online -- a wiki, for
example, and specifically DokuWiki, which is designed for documentation.
Click Here
Click Here
A wiki, in its simplest form, is software that allows anyone to edit any
Web page published on a given site. You can log in (if the wiki supports
user authorisation), add new pages, and edit existing ones. Since most
wikis include version control tools, they are particularly suitable for
collaborative editing. Using a wiki, you can keep track of all changes
in a Web page and compare different versions of a page side-by-side.
DokuWiki is a wiki designed especially for managing documentation. Apart
from the nice lightweight user interface, DokuWiki's includes useful
features such as newsfeeds, support for multiple languages, and section
editing. More importantly, since DokuWiki keeps all the data in text
files, it doesn't rely on MySQL, which greatly simplifies the
installation procedure and maintenance.
To install DokuWiki, unpack the downloaded DokuWiki file, copy the
resulting DokuWiki folder onto your Web server, and make the data
directories (data, attic, and media), the logfile (changes.log) and the
user file (conf/users.auth) writable by the server. (See the
application's installation instructions for more details.)
By default anyone can edit any page on your DokuWiki site. However, when
you are dealing with documentation, you might want to limit access to
authorised users only. Here is how to quickly protect DokuWiki. Edit the
conf/dokuwiki.php file and scroll down to the Authentication options
section. Set the $conf['useacl'] option to 1 and $conf['openregister']
to 0. The latter option disables user registration, so you next have to
add users manually to the conf/users.auth file.
The first line of users.auth shows how the user information should be
formatted. Here's an example:
davidsmith:dae10f355c290d2c6f12205227801ed0:David
Smith:davidsmith-at-mail.com:admin
Note that the password has to be MD5-encrypted. To encrypt the password,
you can either use a simple PHP script or visit one of many Web sites
that can do it for you.
Finally, you have to edit the acl.auth file as follows:
* -at-admin 255
* -at-ALL 1
This allows all users in the admin group to create, edit, and delete
pages, and everyone else to view pages only. Check the documentation if
you need to fine-tune the privileges.
Once DokuWiki is installed, it's time to configure OpenOffice.org
Writer. To be able to use Writer with DokuWiki, you need to download and
install the Iannz DokuWiki macro, which parses the currently opened
Writer document, converts it into the DokuWiki format (the original
document remains intact), and copies it into the Clipboard. All you have
to do then is paste the contents of the Clipboard into a new DokuWiki
page.
To install the macro go to Tools > Macros > Macro... > Organizer >
Libraries. Make sure that soffice is selected in the
Application/Document drop-down menu. Click Append..., point to the
DokuWiki macro file, and click Open. Untick the Standard check box, but
make sure DokuWiki is ticked. If you are updating from an older version,
check Replace existing libraries. Finally, press the Close button.
To make it easier to access and use the macro, you might want to add it
as a menu item. To do that, go to Tools > Configure... > Menu. Select
the desired location in the top list box (~Copy, for example). In the
Category list box click the plus-sign next to OpenOffice.org BASIC
Macros and the plus-sign next to DokuWiki, then click modDokuWiki. From
the Function list, select DokuWiki. Finally, click the New button and
press OK. After that's done you can run the macro by choosing the
DokuWiki item from the Edit menu.
Before you convert Writer files into DokuWiki, make sure you read the
compatibility notes in the macro document. You should also keep in mind
that the macro can correctly process images only when they are anchored
as character. All images will be converted into the DokuWiki format as
{{wiki:PictureName.png}}, where PictureName.png refers to the name of
the picture as it appears in the Navigator. This means that before you
can convert a Writer document containing graphics, you have to change
the pictures' names to the names of the corresponding files and upload
the them into the media/wiki/ directory. To change the name of a picture
in the document, open the Navigator, locate the picture in the Graphics
section, right-click on it, and choose Graphics > Rename. The
three-letter extension refers to the format the original picture file is
stored in (for files stored in PNG format the extension is .png, for
JPEG files the extension is .jpg, and so on). When the Writer document
is ready, run the DokuWiki macro and paste the contents of the Clipboard
into a new DokuWiki page.
Dmitri Popov is a freelance contributor and an avid OpenOffice.org user.
His articles have appeared in Russian, British, and Danish computer
magazines.
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