XML Transformation Script (PowerShell)

[EightBitz]

You can look forward to linked topics in the next version. Not in the body text, but in the topic details, where the linkage currently appears.

Putting the links in the body text invokes various issues I'm not sure how to deal with right now. It may sound simple and straightforward, but when one considers the potential for duplicate topic names and alias names, it becomes much more problematic. I don't see any clear indication of how to deal with this in the XML, so that would leave me to make my best guesses when writing the code, and that's probably not going to be good enough.

So for now, at least, it'll all be in the section with topic details.

I should have that ready by the end of the week. I want to test and tighten up some other things before I post it.

[ShadowChemosh]

Originally Posted by EightBitz

It may sound simple and straightforward, but when one considers the potential for duplicate topic names and alias names, it becomes much more problematic. I don't see any clear indication of how to deal with this in the XML, so that would leave me to make my best guesses when writing the code, and that's probably not going to be good enough.

Its so weird. Your almost starting to sound like Rob!

Update: Adding that the above is 100% meant as a "complement" not a insult at all. Rob is awesome and sounding like him in my world is a "GOOD" thing!

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by ShadowChemosh

Its so weird. Your almost starting to sound like Rob!

Rob is obviously much better at this than I am.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by EightBitz

Putting the links in the body text invokes various issues I'm not sure how to deal with right now. It may sound simple and straightforward, but when one considers the potential for duplicate topic names and alias names, it becomes much more problematic. I don't see any clear indication of how to deal with this in the XML, so that would leave me to make my best guesses when writing the code, and that's probably not going to be good enough.

Links seem to be stored in the XML export as <link target_id="Topic_24"...

where "Topic_24" is the name given to a <topic topic_Id="Topic_24"...

so with enough mapping information in your script, you might be able to map back from the link to the originating topic. (Another issue would be mapping the "span_info/span_List/span" information to the correct position within the contents element.)

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by Farling

Links seem to be stored in the XML export as <link target_id="Topic_24"...

where "Topic_24" is the name given to a <topic topic_Id="Topic_24"...

so with enough mapping information in your script, you might be able to map back from the link to the originating topic. (Another issue would be mapping the "span_info/span_List/span" information to the correct position within the contents element.)

Right. I figured out the link targets and topic IDs, as well as the direction, which is how I got the links working in the topic details section of my output.

I haven't figured out how to apply that information to the content. For instance, I have one topic that has three links to two other topics. The third link is to an alias of one of the other two topics. There are only two "linkage" properties. The both reference the topic's public_name (neither of them reference the alias name).

The alias is the third link the content, and it refers to the first topic. So when I look at the content, there's a link for topic 1, then a link for topic 2, then a link to the alias of topic 1.

When I look at the XML, there's one linkage entry for topic 1 and one linkage entry for topic 2. There is nothing obvious in the content section of the XML (at least, not obvious to me) that indicates which text refers to which linkage entry.

This leads me to believe (I'm not stating a fact here, just a summary conclusion based on what I've been able to reverse engineer so far) that the extra linkage information is stored in the full export, but not the compact one.

Or, there's always the very real possibility that I'm missing something.

[EightBitz]

The linkage info in the full export is indeed more detailed. There are "start" and "length" attributes that direct them the proper points in the content.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by EightBitz

The linkage info in the full export is indeed more detailed. There are "start" and "length" attributes that direct them the proper points in the content.

Ah, sorry about that. I've always been looking at the full export XML data format. I'd forgotten that you were working with the simpler export format.

[EightBitz]

I was trying to add in some input validation, but what I had in mind just doesn't want to work. :-(

You guys seem OK so far. I just wanted to add it for some polish. But I'm very frustrated, and I'm giving up on it ... at least for now. I swear, input validation has vexed me more than everything else I've done with the script, and it's time to just let it go, I think.

So I'll make sure everything else still works and post the update.

[Bidmaron]

What do you mean input validation?

[EightBitz]

Originally Posted by Bidmaron

What do you mean input validation?

Making sure the folders and filenames provided are good, asking for overwrite confirmation, making sure the sort and image scale values are in range ... things like that.

Also, new version is up.

https://github.com/EightBitz/RWExpor.../Version-0.95b