[support] I can't believe you can't add content from the command line...

[dondi_2006]

Greg wrote:

> Well, you were bemoaning the lack of a "real, full,
> screen word processors and HTML editors, with spell
> checking, macros and lots of other goodies." That
> client (and performancing and...) gives most of
> what you were complaining about.

Sorry, my fault here. What I meant is that it doesn't make
sense to have _one_ different "real/full editor" for
every CMS, or every "rich text" use case one has to work
with.

This is what I find really absurd. It is like using a
different mail client for every mailing list you subscribe.



> It would be handy to know more details about your situation:

Right now I have some hundred opendocument files. Length is anything from 1 to 100 pages. structure is relatively simple, almost no tables or graphics. After importing those, I'll
start to write new material regularly or import it from
other external sources (my own mail 
archives, for example). How often I'll have to update
which percentage of pages I don't really know now.

So there are a lot of different inputs, but I could (I
already am!) writing myself a different X -> HTML script.
Is the next step, ie how to import that in Drupal from
the command line, which is missing.

> > What I see is that Drupal, Wordpress, and basically
> > every blog/cms I know of is implicitly designed for
> > author(s) who publish (very) short texts, only once
> > in a while.
> 
> Ok, I'll re-assert my point.  Imagine your requirements 
> in a multi publisher environment.

I don't have to imagine that. This thread is about a website I am building, and will run, all by myself. But I am also a member of other multi-author portals ran exactly
 like you say, done with Drupal, SPIP, Plone and others.
Each site with different needs, each already existing (=I
can't have it changed to drupal), each
with its _own_ darned version of the text editing interface..., all mutilated, different buttons or names
for the same task, different spelling checkers (= I have
to re-define an acronym or custom term in ANY CMS I have
to use, all while I did the same in OpenOffice years
ago...)

> Multiple people editing multiple text files on
> their client side and running scripts that directly
> import them into the system.  That's what you want,
> right?

No, I have these admittedly weird and advanced needs only
for a portal which I'll run myself, as said above.

However, my co-authoring experience in those other portals
I mentioned, while closer to your scenario, still sees
several of us working OFF LINE for the same reason: the
online interface, whatever the CMS is, sucks so badly
that:

* we exchange by email successive OpenOffice revisions
  of anything longer than one page
* when we agree on that, we flip a coin to find the
  unlucky one which has to import it in the CMS GUI
* generally, only _minor_ editing, like correcting typos
  or updating single URLs, is done directly in the GUI.

> Well, how do you control
> versioning?  How do you control the individual
> preferences ...How do you sync a local copy back with
> the server copy (since there are multiple editors...)?

In your scenario (~wikipedia, that is _looooooots_ of
occasional authors who all publish occasionally, publish only one or a few (short) pages, and almost never interact
with each other) I agree with you that the current CMSs
do a more than decent job, and that other architectures
probably wouldn't work.

> I'm not sure I've ever heard/seen anyone do what you're
talking about.
> 
> people use all kinds of CMS for a wide variety of tasks
> including very long and highly formatted documents that
> get revised on a regular basis (have you seen the drupal
> handbooks, for instance?).

I have the drupal handbooks bookmarked and printed out. I
am using them daily these days. I consider their quality
(as one ORGANIC, COHERENT corpus of usefully interrelated information (*)) pretty low, and a good example of what
I am saying: even if the single authors are good and committed, they are limited from their tools: the current generation of CMSs is not designed
for (what I consider) serious, continuous work.

I don't remember if I already said it, but I am sincerely
enjoying this discussion, it's not my intention to troll,
and I don't mean to whine or make a joke of anybody's hard work.

I am just saying that the quality and usefulness of Drupal
and other tools, while very great, is not exactly what is commonly perceived: I like what I am learning through
this discussion, which is really helping me to understand
several sw design concepts.

Ciao,
O.

* regardless of formatting, and I'm not even referring to
the single pages which often are quite good