Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-wiki (137 mails)

["John E. Perry" <j.e.perry@xxxxxxx>]

Rajko M. wrote:
> John, 
>
> Welcome to mail list dedicated to communication about openSUSE wiki. 
> For the rest see below. 
> ...
> >
> There is no special scripting language, it is markup language used in source 
> text of wiki articles, ...
>
> It is another story why MediaWiki authors created set of tags that differ 
> from 
> standard html. 

Well, looking over the MediaWiki history page, I see it simplifies a lot
more than just the short list you gave; so even though I usually dislike
 duplication of resources at whim, (such as the proliferation of
object-oriented scripting languages), I can see benefit in much of
MediaWiki.  Like you, I disdain the silly duplication of (x)html tags.

> > Speaking of which, I subscribed because I'd like to participate.  How do
> > I go about getting involved? Not being knowledgeable in either linux or
> > suse's variations on linux, I doubt that I could contribute much in the
> > technical areas, but I could help out in regularizing the pages'
> > layouts, style, and so forth. 
>
> We need someone with experience in above mentioned, as that is important part 
> of overall wiki appearance and user experience. 

You've inferred more than I tried to imply :-).  I have experience
_using_, not _creating_, templates.  I'm looking at it, and I'll give it
a shot, but...

Indeed, I see that there's already some kind of framework for creating
wiki pages, since all the pages I've seen have the same title graphic
and the same menu on the left.  These do not appear to be frames, since
they move with the content when I scroll.  This I would have considered
the minimum for a template, and seems to be already in place.

Looking at several pages, I see missing some things such as a Table of
Contents section, even on some really long pages.  The idea someone
proposed of subdividing long pages into a set of shorter pages would be
less attractive if we had a template that provided not only the title
graphic and the left-hand menu, but also a set of section blocks that
automatically generates a set of hyperlinks at the top of the page to
each subheading.  This would promote organized development of a page,
and help contributors such as oldcpu to think about organization without
worrying about how to lay out his organized text.  I don't object
necessarily to division by pages, but frequently, it also makes better
sense to have all on one page.

Rather than deal with separation of his ideas, then giving them a
heading, then adding an address tag, then adding a link to that tag,
then finally organizing those links, a contributor could simply edit the
template, putting in a subheading and adding the text for that
subheading for each subdivision of his article. Then MediaWiki (I
suppose?) would automatically put the headers into the wiki's standard
format, add the wiki's standard subheading hyperlink to the wiki's
standard table of contents, and insert appropriate wiki-standard
divisions between sections.

The templates would include wiki-standard cross-references,
wiki-standard further readings and resources, all in wiki-standard
locations on the page, so that after viewing just a couple of pages,
users would know where to find everything, and what it looks like, with
very little need for searching around.

Be aware that I have no idea yet how to accomplish all this; I'll study
the problem, but if anyone else has already done or learned this, they
can do it with my blessing, or point me toward resources for learning
it.  In fact, I'd like to learn it anyway, so if anyone already knows it
and can short-cut my learning, I'd be happy to be their helper, and work
at their direction.

John Perry


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