[HECnet] HECnet .HLP library for OpenVMS

[Sampsa Laine]

On 8 Sep 2015, at 09:53, Mark Wickens <mark at wickensonline.co.uk> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 08/09/15 08:34, Mark Benson wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On 08/09/2015 00:57, Sampsa Laine wrote:
>>> Yeah, that should be doable.
>>> 
>>> Doesn't even need to be a database, just an agreed markup structure and files..
>>> 
>>> Then just convert them to whatever format you want.
>> 
>> Using flat files makes it less easy to search and query the data, and also potentially makes the data structure less flexible for future applications, but it is easier to host and transport. Kind of. But please, no XML. It makes my ears bleed.
> 
> json is the friendlier standards based alternative to XML.
> 

But these are largely text files with just simple headings, so not sure we need anything more complex than what goes into the VMS HELP system.

>> 
>> I'd love to do a Python/Django/PostgreSQL project with a set of output scripts but I have no Django-friendly hosting that could be reliably internet-facing available (only LAMP and frankly I'm starting to dislike PHP more and more). A
>> 
>> I tried goofing with MediaWiki a while back but found it to be... well not to my taste. It's a useful tool but it's not the right one for this IMHO, I think outputting Wiki data to files for various OSs might be a bit of a bear.
>> 
> My favourite wiki is Confluence by Atlassian. It's a commercial product but only $10 for a license (which goes to charity) and it just bloody works!
> 
> Mark.

I'm actually OK with MediaWiki, producing their markup from a VMS .HLP file would be trivial and then just a quick HTML POST to update each entry.

Let's see how many people can actually be bothered to write up an entry for their systems before developing anything more complex than a VMS HELP converter...

sampsa

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