FAQs -> Wiki

Hi all,

Just FYI I've put the first draft of the FAQs that are
currently exported from WebX into our new java.net Wiki.

    http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Netbeans/WebHome

This is probably not the complete set of FAQs that should
move, but since the format of these were all the same
(they all came from the same WebX dump) it was easy to
do this all at once with some perl.

I simply converted some html parts into Wiki syntax, and
copy pasted it all.  There is still plenty of normal HTML
in there, which should probably be slowly be converted
over.

What's next :

1) Review html/wiki conversion.  Eg I found (and fixed)
one place where a <pre> tag caused a whole section of an
FAQ to be lost.  There might be other places like that I
didn't see;

2) Update scripts which currently grab these FAQs from
WebX to grab them from the Wiki version instead;

3) Identify which other FAQs should move ot the Wiki, and
move them;

4) Perhaps merge a few FAQs - eg Vincent suggested
merging the performance FAQ with the configuration
(probably a good idea IMO);

5) Announce the move to the community, and call for ppl
to review and update actual FAQ content!

Vincent, you had offered to help - you could either
help me with 1) (which is going to be very boring),
or perhaps start on 3) if you want.  Anyone else is
free to jump in also of course.  If you do, pls post
notes about what you are doing/have done here so we
stay in sync.

For 1 - simply look at the Wiki version of the FAQ,
and the original version on www.nb.org, and make sure
no content is lost.  If you want to help here, I suggest
starting on the "Developer FAQs", I will do User FAQs.

For 3 - Look for other FAQs *hosted on www*, not on
nb.org module websites, listed on

    http://www.netbeans.org/kb/faqs/
    http://www.netbeans.org/community/kb/faq.html

Anything legal or "official" of course cannot move
license FAQ, JCA FAQ ...).  Make a list of those you
think should/can move, and send them here.  We will
have to get the final list approved from management
I guess.

If a FAQ can obviously move (eg from quick look -
Platform FAQs, Mailing List FAQs ...) and you want to get
into it, go ahead and make a first draft on java.net.

I'm new to Wikis but I read some syntax rules etc :

    http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/TWiki/GoodStyle
    http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/TWiki/TextFormattingRules

(linked from the java.net wiki pages)

One nice thing I found is %TOC% whicdh will auto-generate
a table of contents at the top of a page.  Convert each
question on the page into a heading, and use %TOC% at the
top of the page.  See some of those already done for
examples.

-- 
Jack Catchpoole
NetBeans/Sun Microsystems
http://www.netbeans.org/