Re: HOWTO export document to wiki text?

From: Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl>
To: Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com>
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: HOWTO export document to wiki text?
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:32:59 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <836EFF3E-61D6-4FFE-876B-630313C4C8A6@uva.nl> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <f46c52560901182305g4c834a3bxf86fd9434c3b72fe@mail.gmail.com>

On Jan 19, 2009, at 8:05 AM, Rustom Mody wrote:

> Uwe Koloska <uwe <at> koloro.de> writes:
>
>> there is this very nice export to text feature and the superb HTML  
>> export.
> <snipped>
>> And if there is no such feature yet, where do I have to start to  
>> implement it?
>
> +1 for me.
>
> I need at least two more exporters, maybe more -- they may be of
> different level of generality/use to other org users.
> If I can get a handle on it I'll try my hand.
>
> As I understand (and Eric points out) org-exp.el is the central place
> to start looking, but I gather that there is also another more
> data-oriented approach experimentally supported by some Bastien code.
> I remember Carsten talking about it some 2-3 months back that
> something like this (entire org mode buffer as a lisp (property) list
> or something to that effect) but that its not (yet then) integrated
> into the rest of org.

That code is in the EXP subdirectory of the git repo, in the file
org-export.el.
It is not very well integrated yet, and it also does only a partial
parsing job, basically the document structure and the meta data.

I did have high hope for this a while ago, it could have become the
basis for a new general export engine.  But I think that dream is
gone - unless someone picks it up now.

Basic approach would be:

- start with org-export.el.
- enhance the parser so that it will at least do plain lists - there
   is an excellent list parser (org-parse-list, also by Bastien) in  
org-list.el.
- use that to split the "content" part of each entry into sub blocks
   like

   (paragraph "text")
   (ordered-list bullet-type
     item1 item2 ....)
   (unordered-list bullet-type
     item1 item2 ....)

    or similar, where item is some kind of structure that also
    holds information about a possible check box and its state.

- Also find a way to put setup information like #+STARTUP etc into
   structured elements.

When this is done, write a function that can write a valid Org file
from such a list, and you have written an org-to-org converter, with the
practical application to normalize Org files.

Then you can start writing wiki converters, with using the list
structure as the common intermediate format.

My personal feeling is right now that we will not anymore *replace*
the HTML and LaTeX exporters with this new exporter, because too much
specialized work has gone into making these really quite nice
and feature rich.

However as a basis for any new exporters, and in particular as
an engine to read an write wiki formats, this could really work
very well.

I will be ready help with advice, but I will not do this myself.

- Carsten

>
>
> So tips/pointers on this will be welcome.
>
> Rustom
>
>
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