11 February 2009, 8:47

Dear All

Is there a Mahara 1 'manaul' I can study?  I would like a full admin and user guide that I can download and read, rather than have to naviage loads of wiki/web page.  PDF? RTF? any chance?

Thanks

JW

11 February 2009, 9:43

Hi Jonathan

I know Andy from Flexible wrote some really good documentation at one point but I'm not sure where it is in the move from the old mahara.org to the new one.  I'm sure once NZ wakes up someone will either port it over or point you to it.

However, I'm curious why you want a pdf rather than wiki documentation? If we produce a pdf it greatly reduces the ability of the community to collaborate on documentation - and as you're no doubt aware, it's one of the areas we need the most help with.

Cheers

Penny

11 February 2009, 10:55

Penny

So I can print it out, and read it offline as a study aid and reference doc. I characterise it as a 'manual' for version 1, like any other software. The wiki of course is both a source for and a supplement to such a manual. These technologies are not mutually exclusive, the presence of a  manual in itself does NOT reduce the ability of a community to collaborate on future versions of it.

Regards

JW

11 February 2009, 12:11

11 February 2009, 14:39

11 February 2009, 12:42

Hello Penny,

 I also prefer an alternative documentation in pdf/doc etc to the wiki so that you can learn when you don't have Internet access. We assume that most of the people have reliable Internet connections, but when I lived in Africa or Asia, the connections was very unreliable and sometimes dial-up.

I remember having seen a CMS-I can't remember which one- that allowed to generate the wiki documentation in the form of a pdf. It was very useful to have this possibility.

 Regards

Mari

11 February 2009, 14:41

Definitely a fair point.

I have no idea whether our wiki can do this or not, but it's worth investigating. I actually tend to write documentation in latex, from which of course you can build a pdf, AND it can be contributed to by many people, if you keep it in version control (latex in git for example).

I must have misread the original poster, I thought it was an OR situation rather than an AND one :)

11 February 2009, 16:19

11 February 2009, 16:55

Hi Penny,

Dekiwiki (the engine used in wiki.mahara.org) can produce a PDF file for any wiki page, as long as you have PrinceXML installed (see the details to install it in Debian here). Then you can create the PDF version of the page by following the instructions given in the manual.

Saludos. Iñaki.

11 February 2009, 17:32

Yes our wiki can export pages to pdf, it can make books out of many pages too. I have princeXML installed on the server.

The canonical source of the documentation should be on the wiki, and once it's there we should be able to produce PDFs of it without bother.