Etherdump

Etherdump is a software outcome based on the experiences of working with etherpad both ongoing (as in the constant install) and in live events via local (etherpad) servers. It's a response to the problem of how to publish collectively at the end of an intense situated working session, to force a moment of publishing and make explicit the responsibilities of participants (and avoid pushing these to event organizers or eventual technical infrastructures).

The code is published on gitlab
https://gitlab.com/activearchives/etherdump

Etherdump is is a python script that interfaces with the etherpad API to pull contents from an etherpad and save them as static files. The software is designed to integrate with a makfile based workflow.

Sync

By vritue of a sync command that pulls / touches metadata related to pads to local files, the tool supports a makefile based workflow where changes can flow / be triggered by changes to these metadata files.

Pull

The etherdump commands gettext, gethtml, and creatediffhtml each copy the contents of a pad to a local file in one of three formats offered by the etherpad API: "raw" text (with formatting stripped), HTML (with no authorship info), and a "differential" HTML where authorship is indicated with colored spans.

Index

After syncing and pulling, the tool contains a mechanism for creating index pages based on the summation of pad metadata. New pages can be produced based on a template (using the Django-inspired python templating system jinja).

Maybe however, this is the point where the tool should STOP and leave space for other tools to do WHATEVER...

CHANGE LOG
Jan 2016, adding html5tidy to the pull dumps to make self-contained documents (with cross linked versions).
The useful promise of open standard metadata is to allow:
* multiple, maximally expressive and flexible (ad hoc) means of writing structured data...
* standard procedures for gathering, reframing, and reusing that data,across multiple sources.