Expanding existing DVCS Wiki
- by A Lion
A portion of my job is to maintain technical documentation for a rapidly expanding manufacturing company. Because it is only a portion of my job and the company's product line is expanding so quickly, I can't stay on top of the documentation. As a result, I've been yearning for an information management system with a handful of specific features. I've found many products that have a subset, but none that have all the features I'm looking for.
I'm at the point of picking an existing product and expanding it to cover my desired feature set, however, this will be a pet project and I will be learning the underlying language as I go. So, the main question is which existing product will be the easiest to expand to cover the full feature set and has a relatively easy to learn language? Alternatively, have I missed another existing program that will cover the feature set or should be in my list of "close, but not quite there"?
Feature Set
web interface
based on a distributed version control system (e.g., git)
easy to edit by logged in novices (e.g. wiki, multimarkdown)
outputs in more traditional formats (e.g., doc, odt, pdf)
edits held in queue until editor/engineer/manager approves them (e.g., MS Word editing) [this is the really big elephant in list - suggestions on where to start appreciated]
edits held in queue specifically for engineer approval [extra limb of the elephant in the list]
well-supported in the open source community
Closest, but not quite there
ikiwiki - http://ikiwiki.info (php)
lots of awesome functionality and extensions, including easy to edit and based on DVCS
lacks a review/forward for review queue
appears to be well-supported within the OSS community
gitit - http://gitit.net/ (haskell)
easy to edit and based on DVCS
lots of outputs in traditional formats
a great web-based gui diff interface
lacks a review/forward for review queue
appears to be primarily maintained by one individual
