Hi houdiniks
Sorry for the cross posting cos I have put this message also in the mailing list.
Well I am doing a set of tools and I am in the doubt of how to document them, in one side the wiki way in the Type Properties of every operator is quite cool in the other I also need to have this docs in a server for online consulting.
So I have seen that in the help directory of Houdini that you have all the help organized into a directory hierarchy and you have a text file with the doc in wiki format and the corresding .html file with the translation to html.
Will be great to use the same method for my tools so this way I can get them working in both Houdini and a server.
The thing is, is it possible to implement the Houdini wiki in my server? Is there any command/s that will get the whole hirarchy of docs in wiki format and pass them to html?
If my project's help follows the next hirarchy:
$HOME/src/MyTools/help/MyTools
And then under this directory I have the index.txt and index,html. How can I point to this page from the Houdini web browser?
Of course I a msetting the HSITE variable to $HOME/src/MyTools .
If I have a custom SOP node, for instance: MyFooSOPTool
And then instead of putting the help into the OTL I have something like:
$HOME/src/MyTools/help/MyTools/nodes/sop/MyFooSOPTool.txt
$HOME/src/MyTools/help/MyTools/nodes/sop/MyFooSOPTool.html
The help browser will be able to find the help files? Again with the HSITE variable pointing to the proper path.

thx

If you figure this out, let me know! I've been trying to figure out exactly the same thing for a while, and basically gave up.

The fundamental problem is that the houdini-wiki expects text, wiki text to be specific. If you have your own wiki, e.g. TWiki, Tiki Wiki, MediaWiki, etc. the output of that is html, not plain text.

I suppose if you could make a theme for your helpcard wiki pages (I'm defining a theme to be css + text->html processing) that deliberately skips all processing, you might be able to get output that's pretty close to the original input.

Then all that's left is to actually get your wiki to call SESI's wiki translator, and create HTML out of that.

My approach back at R&H for helpcards prior to version 8 (the b&w ones) was to make a bunch of TWiki macros, e.g. paramname, description, whatever the columns were, and into the wiki you entered basically the same minimalist amount of data that you would into the SESIwiki.

Antoine Durr
If you figure this out, let me know! I've been trying to figure out exactly the same thing for a while, and basically gave up.
The fundamental problem is that the houdini-wiki expects text, wiki text to be specific. If you have your own wiki, e.g. TWiki, Tiki Wiki, MediaWiki, etc. the output of that is html, not plain text.
I suppose if you could make a theme for your helpcard wiki pages (I'm defining a theme to be css + text->html processing) that deliberately skips all processing, you might be able to get output that's pretty close to the original input.
Then all that's left is to actually get your wiki to call SESI's wiki translator, and create HTML out of that.

The thing I really want to avoid is the double work of doing macros/scripts from one wiki format to another, is not really a problem to embeed the output of SESIWiki into an other wiki or doc system, cos at the end everything is html.
The key thing is how to use the wiki engine used by Houdini for your own pourposes. So you can do two things:
Having a text file in SESIWiki format convert it to html
Having a site, for instance, the studio intranet, how to use the SESIWiki into it so people can directly write Houdini inhouse tools docs in the SESIWiki format and keep a consistency with the Houdini docs
Another useful thing will be in the case you can get a html file, as you have said with the output from othe wikis, how to make an operator help to use this file instead of the help embeebed into the HDA.
Basically I would be happy if the SESIWiki could be used outside of Houdini, as an stand alone wiki, this will help a lot for studios and 3rd party developers to write docs for Houdini custom tools.

lisux
The thing I really want to avoid is the double work of doing macros/scripts from one wiki format to another, is not really a problem to embeed the output of SESIWiki into an other wiki or doc system, cos at the end everything is html.

Yeah, sure you can do it statically, but the challenge is to do it dynamically, i.e. so that a user can edit the raw text via a wiki rather than a file stuck in some particular location on some particular disk.

The key thing is how to use the wiki engine used by Houdini for your own pourposes. So you can do two things:
Having a text file in SESIWiki format convert it to html
Having a site, for instance, the studio intranet, how to use the SESIWiki into it so people can directly write Houdini inhouse tools docs in the SESIWiki format and keep a consistency with the Houdini docs
Another useful thing will be in the case you can get a html file, as you have said with the output from othe wikis, how to make an operator help to use this file instead of the help embeebed into the HDA.
Basically I would be happy if the SESIWiki could be used outside of Houdini, as an stand alone wiki, this will help a lot for studios and 3rd party developers to write docs for Houdini custom tools.

The SESIwiki is a javascript implementation of an OSS text-file-to-html converter. If hacking the existing setup to do it again in that mode isn't doable, I'm sure it would make a good RFE for SESI.

Antoine Durr

lisux
The thing I really want to avoid is the double work of doing macros/scripts from one wiki format to another, is not really a problem to embeed the output of SESIWiki into an other wiki or doc system, cos at the end everything is html.

Yeah, sure you can do it statically, but the challenge is to do it dynamically, i.e. so that a user can edit the raw text via a wiki rather than a file stuck in some particular location on some particular disk.

The key thing is how to use the wiki engine used by Houdini for your own pourposes. So you can do two things:
Having a text file in SESIWiki format convert it to html
Having a site, for instance, the studio intranet, how to use the SESIWiki into it so people can directly write Houdini inhouse tools docs in the SESIWiki format and keep a consistency with the Houdini docs
Another useful thing will be in the case you can get a html file, as you have said with the output from othe wikis, how to make an operator help to use this file instead of the help embeebed into the HDA.
Basically I would be happy if the SESIWiki could be used outside of Houdini, as an stand alone wiki, this will help a lot for studios and 3rd party developers to write docs for Houdini custom tools.

The SESIwiki is a javascript implementation of an OSS text-file-to-html converter. If hacking the existing setup to do it again in that mode isn't doable, I'm sure it would make a good RFE for SESI.

Yep seems to be based on these projects:
http://daringfireball.net/projects/ [daringfireball.net]
http://attacklab.net/showdown/ [attacklab.net]
But the sintax used in SESIWiki is different.
Also the perl version of markdown can be use from the command line, can I do the same with the javascript version shipped with Houdini?