| Subject: | format=raw would be useful for obtaining the wiki text of nodes |
This is something desirable for wikihoover/wikimirror scripts.
It is proposed that we have a URL mechanism http:/this.site/?id=Foo_Bar_Club:format=raw or possibly http:/this.site/Foo_Bar_Club:format=raw in the manner of the RDF feed for metadata.
Mirror scripts have a requirement for a way of obtaining the raw wiki text of nodes. This can be done with present software using action=edit and HTML scraping the form, but this is less desirable, as the postaction edit may have triggers or be disabled for the userid who is trying to do it.
After all, OpenGuides is licensed under Creative Commons and the project wants others to use the data and content. If we need to restrict or disable editing, this may prevent innocent distribution of the raw wiki content, which is against our aims of openness.
I know that several guides have attempted to include wikipage content in the RDF/XML by customising the RDF code. This has been problematical owing to the need to escape out all XML offensive characters and syntax, including HTML tags. I propose an alternative viz: make the raw wiki text available directly from a url. Whatever is reading this response will not be looking for valid XML - just valid wiki text.