Does anyone know if there is a help authoring tool out there that can produce help documentation for a software product that looks like a wiki? We are currently using the Confluence wiki engine, which is absolutely brilliant and we were wondering if there is anything like that but without the need for an Apache server. Something stand-alone that can give our users the help documentation they need. We have used help authoring tools and they all seem so clunky compared to a wiki.
Use Wiki on a Stick.
Its a single .html file written in Javascript/html and saves the changes onto itself.
You don't even need Apache. Awesome tool!
How about Juli? It generates static HTML so you can browse documents by browser only.
It is used for:
Juli documentation itself.
Edgar project documentation (another my OSS project).
My personal wiki/blog. I'll show later since new users can only post two links(stackoverflow limitation)
Related
I have to create web application similar to twitter with a few tweaks using django. I am clueless if I have to use a CMS for this or any other existing django-application. Working from ground up is quite tedious to be honest. Can anyone recommend me which CMS( or anything else) I should attempt trying?
There is a project called trillr1. According to its page:
"Trillr is a Twitter-like microblogging service enhanced with user directory and group discussion features. " that's maybe what you want.
https://contributions.coremedia.com/trillr1
I guess, the closest you can come with an out-of-the-box software to imitate Twitter is Status.net, the software, that powers identi.ca. However, this is a PHP application.
I'm not aware of something similar in the Django world.
I am looking for a blog solution to run inside a Django project deployed on the Google App Engine. After a bit of review I decided to try out Mezzanine v0.11.3. I've overcome the hurdle of getting it in project using the advice of others deploying on App Engine at this link: http://groups.google.com/group/mezzanine-users/browse_thread/thread/c8b13c41a3168c94.
Mezzanine is now showing up in the Admin, but clicking on Blog posts leads to a multi-table inheritance failure. I believe that this is due to multi-site support functionality in Mezzanine via use of the Django sites framework.
Has anyone overcome this issue? I'm going to try to use django-dbindexer but I'm not confident it will work.
*Update: as far as I can tell, the folks at AllButtonsPressed don't have any magic solutions to work around ManyToManyField issues yet, so I think that option is dead.
If no one knows a work around, do any of you know of a good blog solution I can run inside a Django project on the App Engine?
*Update: found this post Integrating Blogger into a Google App Engine App. Will investigate if this solves the problem.
*Current Status:
I have not been able to solve this problem and I don't think it is currently solvable. Thought I would share what I found through my investigations though; maybe someone out there can carry on and come up with a solution.
Options tried:
Bloog
I looked this over but it is a Python
solution, not a Django solution and I
didn't want to do the work to turn it
into one
Byteflow ( https://bitbucket.org/piranha/byteflow/wiki/Home ) notes:
designed to be standalone, will need a
lot of edits to settings.py,
inclusion of 12 additional apps and
overrides on account settings plus
hand tuning at every upgrade.
AppEngineBlog ( http://code.google.com/p/appengineblogsoftware/ ) notes:
written in appengine specific code,
not maintained, no example sites
available to see how it looks
Coltrane ( http://code.google.com/p/coltrane-blog/source/browse/ ):
simple blog constructed from standard
Django functionality no development
or support, basically need to use
this code as a way to develop your
own blog and go from there
Flother ( https://github.com/flother/flother ):
found via Coltrane comments, probably
embeddable without too much trouble,
requires 8 additional apps,the photos
and places components have
ManyToManyFields that would have to
be re-written or these components
disabled
Blogger API ( http://code.google.com/apis/blogger/ ):
use Blogger at whatever location you
wish to gain fully functional
blogging capabilities, then use
Blogger API to deliver content to any
other site you wish to display it
Flother came close to what I need but there is still a fair bit of uncertainty and effort there. I'm proceeding with the Blogger option as the only viable choice for me at this time.
Well, as far as I can see, there is no way to get Mezzanine running on GAE other than wading into the code and ripping out anything relating to a ManyToManyField (Sites support, Photos and ... something else. Can't remember what).
The only thing I could find out there that has the potential to be added to an existing project, uses only portable Django code (app engine specific) and runs on App Engine is http://www.allbuttonspressed.com/projects/allbuttonspressed . I haven't actually tried to integrate it yet because I'm going to see if the Blogger solution works.
I've been using bloog for two of my blogs without any serious troubles so far - there are few little quirks that make it mildly unpleasant sometimes but nothing that's been a deal breaker.
I use the Blogger solution and it works fine, especially if you're only one person and you run the whole site.
The problem comes when you want to others to help you out. Now every css and design decision needs to be sent to a programmer who hacks away at django templates. A CMS with a real WYSIWYG editor would allow you to ship off that work to marketing/design people and let you focus on the fun stuff.
I came across a decent review of the various blogging engines for Django, however, it's unclear how well they each integrate with GAE.
I have deployed Mezzanine/Cartridge in GAE succesfully but I have not documented it yet in github or something like that. It works using python 2.7 of course and django 1.5. Additionally it works with Google Cloud SQL, and the local file system GAE provides. It additionally works with google gmail facilities. For thumbnailing I am using local GAE functionality.
It requires several additional libraries like boto, but it works well.
See a short demo in midevocional365.appspot.com/
I'd like to put documentation on a confluence wiki for a project I'm working on, and I want to automatically generate some of the documentation from javadocs. Is there a plugin for confluence that makes this easy (did not see in preliminary search), alternatively has anyone written scripts to post wiki pages to confluence based on javadocs? An ant task might be cool, then I could have the wiki as a target.
Confluence JavaDocs Macros is a plugin that will generate wiki pages from javadocs. The downside is that a zip archive must be made of the javadocs and placed on the first page of a space, and multiple javadocs cannot co-exist in the same space.
The plugin is also not compatible with every version of Confluence.
And you might want to add javadocs to confluence if you only had a confluence server (or the confluence server is the primary place for documentation) to host your documentation... It has happened before.
Why would you upload javadoc into an editing system? This sounds rater odd. We created a apache server on which the project documentation is uploaded (which is created form Java as javadoc, and from some project documentation (which we also store in the project (inside SCM)).
Next to that we have a Wiki system, in which everyone can write all kind of stuff. It is easy in most wiki to make a external reference (to the Apache web-server, project documentation / javadoc pages).
The good thing about this is, that the project documentation can be re-generated through ant / maven / etc. and automaticly uploaded to some web-server. There is can only be red and not modified. That can only be done through the project sources. Which is good, because otherwise people start to edit the wiki pages, which then get replaced now and then, because a new build / release is created.
You can use the Docs Plugin: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/net.meixxi.confluence.docs.docs-plugin. This plugin enables you to upload and publish your JavaDocs and other HTML and JavaScript based content in Confluence.
Docs provides also a REST Interface in order to automate the publishing process. So, publishing the JavaDocs can become part of the Continuous Integartion Process. A technical documentation as well as a sample code can you find here: https://ricebean.net/confluence-docs
I'm a C++ developer with basic Python skills. Here's the task, a friend of mine is running a small company and he asked me if I can make a website for him. I have no real deadline so I think it's a perfect opportunity to try sth new and do some web development.
User has to be able to add photos, change texts ect.
Do you think that Django would be an overkill for this kind of project? I have no experience with it. Perhaps I should try to customize some blog engine or Google Sites?
You may be interested in Google App Engine (http://code.google.com/appengine) which recently exhibited a rise in popularity. The application runs on Google's servers, eliminating the need to maintain Apache and worry about up-time. You basically get a Django-based solution with a data store, with an SDK which allows you to conveniently develop an application on your desktop and then upload it to appspot.com for everyone to use.
The documentation is great, and even if you eventually decide not to use it, the tutorial is excellent for getting you up to speed on Python and webapp design. There is also a codelab which contains a simple Wiki example.
If you need to set up quickly a very simple website, Wordpress can be the perfect choice.
Wordpress is born as a blogging platform, but in the newer version you can manage pages, contact form and so on. And you can find good plugins to expand its capabilities.
The administration interface of wordpress is clean and easy to use, the page or article editor is simple and powerful. Add an image in a post or in a page is easy and intuitive as in no other opensource CMS I've seen.
Django is a pretty flexible framework, it tends to scale well both up and down. It may be overkill to have to learn the whole API for just a simple site, but if you're looking to learn something new, and have some time to spare, then it's a fun platform to learn and work from. My suggestion would be to install the API and have a play around with it, read the Django book and see how you get on.
Maybe before diving into Joomla or Django a first step should be working with the technologies in a raw, pure way. Create a simple web page that excutes some server side script (python? php?) that retrieves data from a mySQL database and displays it. Throw in a little javascript too. Just so that you feel comfortable with the bare-bones fundamentals.
Then when you dive into the big frameworks and libraries, they won't seem so magical.
If you're really asking what the best tool for the job is, then you are going to have to give a little more detail than "first small web project." If what you are asking is more along the lines of you want to learn web application development and what you already know is C++ and python so what would be a good web application stack where you can leverage your current skillset, then here are some more suggestions.
Django is pretty cool. Every one has already talked about it here. As mentioned earlier, the google app engine is sort of based on Django.
Also, consider zope which is another python based web application container.
If you wanted to leverage your C++ knowledge instead, then consider Wt.
Why don't you take a look at the hello world examples for all three and decide which one looks the most interesting to you?
There are a multitude of website frameworks and kits that you could go with as opposed to starting development work from the ground up. It really depends on what kind of technology you want to go with, and how comfortable you feel with the language's potential. As mentioned above, there are things like Joomla, and If you want to stick to PhP frameworks, you could also use Drupal, which has a ton of documentation and support, and is relatively easy to understand.
If you want to venture into the Microsoft realm, you could look into DotNetNuke. It too is much like Drupal and Joomla, so it's a nice CMS framework, which you might feel more comfortable with since ASP.Net is based off of a programming language as opposed to a a scripting language, unlike Classic ASP or PhP. If you're going to go the Microsoft route, I also recommend taking a look at their BizSpark developer program - but that's more dependent on how serious your friend is on running his site as a business.
Then you also have a lot of things offered up by Google, such as their charts and visualizations -- which doesn't seems like something you're looking for, but for future reference, or cool little things like a map mashup.
It really depends on how much you're willing to learn and how much time you have and sometimes not having a rough deadline is the worst possible thing that could happen. Naturally everything starts to take longer. By the time you're done, the tech is either out of date, or you've taken so long that the business plan has changed.
using django it is easy, there is already an application for photo albums available at http://code.google.com/p/django-photologue/ it becomes with tagging too and maybe you just need to add some jquery effects to get done your site.
To get this done you just create a django project, add the applications to your settings, configure your urls and templates, and thats it.
Also i f you need a small version you can just use this code as a base of your new app.
have fun with django!!
sergio
Pylons is an excellent Python web framework based on WSGI standard. It has ported many of the features of Ruby on Rails so is great for rapid development.
I've been using it for a few years now combined with SQLAlchemy for my database layer and I've found it perfect for development of all my web sites.
It is easily good enough for production sites too.
The one downside I've found is slight complications getting it deployed on shared hosting but as long as you have shell access to your host, you should be fine.
You may try to install and customize Joomla (http://www.joomla.org/) It's full of stuff, easy to use and easy to customize also.
Everybody reaches for a framework, but, assuming this is running on Apache, why not just server side includes, and, since you have Python experience, Python CGI scripts that emit JSON for use in the UI by Javascript. By going with CGI/SSI you defer your decisions about framework and/or templating system until later, when you have more experience under your belt, but you should be able to get a reasonable amount of re-use of whatever Python code you write.
I'll cast my vote for Drupal (http://www.drupal.org)
I think LOVDbyLess might do exactly what you want. If all you need is basic blog and photo upload and a simple SNS, then check out this Ruby-on-Rails open-source thing. It's been evolving with new features and is pretty easy to set up.
Does anybody know a wiki engine that can be built on top of a RESTful application?
I have a restful application, that exposes a document resource,
I want the wiki engine to use the REST API to persist the documents, instead of saving them to a DB.
I am also open for suggestions of an open-source wiki engines that can be easily modified to support such functionality.
As Wikis were originally designed to work in a standard browser, and most browsers did not support anything except GET and POST, REST is not a concept used a lot on the wiki world. However, nowadays, some wikis (foswiki - the community fork of TWiki for instance) provide you a REST API to it http://foswiki.org/System/CommandAndCGIScripts#rest ).
But you need the opposite: a wiki with a customizable backend (storage) that could be plugged on top of a REST storage service. As wikis with a pluggable backend, I know only of pmwiki http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/PmWiki and foswiki (the open fork of TWiki) http://foswiki.org.
Okay, this is a puzzler. Wikis in general are more or less the canonical example of a RESTful approach. The page name names a resource. What do you want that isn't in, eg, Twiki?
While you could try to find a wiki that can use a REST backend, it may be better to write a small wiki yourself. Because even though a your backend has REST interface, that doesn't mean you can put some other application in front of it.
dokuwiki does not use a database. It is a filesystem based wiki. I don't know its internal code structure but you might be able to use it as your base.