sys.stdout.write(re.sub(pattern, manglecat, line))
else: sys.stdout.write(line)
-## Step 4: Mediawiki plugin
+## Step 4: Mediawiki plugin or Converting to Markdown
+
+You can use a plugin to make ikiwiki support Mediawiki syntax, or you can
+convert pages to a format ikiwiki understands.
+
+### Step 4a: Mediawiki plugin
The [[plugins/contrib/mediawiki]] plugin can be used by ikiwiki to interpret
most of the Mediawiki syntax.
* tables
* spaces and other funky characters ("?") in page names
+### Step 4b: Converting pages
+
+#### Converting to Markdown
+
+There is a Python script for converting from the Mediawiki format to Markdown in [[mithro]]'s conversion repository at <http://github.com/mithro/media2iki>. *WARNING:* While the script tries to preserve everything is can, Markdown syntax is not as flexible as Mediawiki so the conversion is lossy!
+
+ # The script needs the mwlib library to work
+ # If you don't have easy_install installed, apt-get install python-setuptools
+ sudo easy_install mwlib
+
+ # Get the repository
+ git clone git://github.com/mithro/media2iki.git
+ cd media2iki
+
+ # Do a conversion
+ python mediawiki2markdown.py --no-strict --no-debugger <my mediawiki file> > output.md
+
+
+[[mithro]] doesn't frequent this page, so please report issues on the [github issue tracker](https://github.com/mithro/media2iki/issues).
+
## Scripts
-[[sabr]] used to explain how to [import MediaWiki content into
-git](http://u32.net/Mediawiki_Conversion/index.html?updated), including full
-edit history, but as of 2009/10/16 that site is not available. A copy of the
-information found on this website is stored at <http://github.com/mithro/media2iki>.
+There is a repository of tools for converting MediaWiki to Git based Markdown wiki formats (such as ikiwiki and github wikis) at <http://github.com/mithro/media2iki>. It also includes a standalone tool for converting from the Mediawiki format to Markdown. [[mithro]] doesn't frequent this page, so please report issues on the [github issue tracker](https://github.com/mithro/media2iki/issues).
[[Albert]] wrote a ruby script to convert from mediawiki's database to ikiwiki at <https://github.com/docunext/mediawiki2gitikiwiki>
+[[scy]] wrote a python script to convert from mediawiki XML dumps to git repositories at <https://github.com/scy/levitation>.
+
[[Anarcat]] wrote a python script to convert from a mediawiki website to ikiwiki at <http://anarcat.ath.cx/software/mediawikigitdump.git/>. The script doesn't need any special access or privileges and communicates with the documented API (so it's a bit slower, but allows you to mirror sites you are not managing, like parts of Wikipedia). The script can also incrementally import new changes from a running site, through RecentChanges inspection. It also supports mithro's new Mediawiki2markdown converter.
> Some assembly is required to get Mediawiki2markdown and its mwlib
zsh: exit 1 ./mediawikigitdump.py -v -t http://archiveteam.org
</pre>
-[[scy]] wrote a python script to convert from mediawiki XML dumps to git repositories at <https://github.com/scy/levitation>.
+> > > > > I have updated my script to call the parser without strict mode and to trim leading slashes (and /../, for that matter...) -- [[anarcat]]
+
+> > > > > > Getting this error with the new version on any site I try (when using -t only): `TypeError: argument 1 must be string or read-only character buffer, not None`
+> > > > > > bisecting, commit 55941a3bd89d43d09b0c126c9088eee0076b5ea2 broke it.
+> > > > > > --[[Joey]]
+
+> > > > > > > I can't reproduce here, can you try with -v or -d to try to trace down the problem? -- [[anarcat]]
+
+<pre>
+fetching page list from namespace 0 ()
+found 473 pages
+fetching page 0 - 9 from http://www.amateur-radio-wiki.net/index.php?action=raw&title=0+-+9 into 0_-_9.mdwn
+Traceback (most recent call last):
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 304, in <module>
+ main()
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 301, in main
+ fetch_allpages(options.namespace)
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 74, in fetch_allpages
+ fetch_page(page.getAttribute('title'))
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 180, in fetch_page
+ f.write(options.convert(urllib.urlopen(url).read()))
+TypeError: argument 1 must be string or read-only character buffer, not None
+zsh: exit 1 ./mediawikigitdump.py -v -d -t http://www.amateur-radio-wiki.net/
+</pre>