[wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

hakjoon · 2006-11-13 01:47:50

I am going to do my best to get the Textbook MediaWiki install updated to the latest release this week.

During the upgrades Textbook might be unavailable at times. Please bear with me while I try to catch up.

Last edited by hakjoon (2006-11-13 01:48:37)

hakjoon · 2006-11-14 06:34:56

Textbok has been updated to 1.6.8 (I’m taking baby steps).

I had a bunch of issues which I think have been resolved but please report anything weird going on. I’m going to try to get it up to 1.8 by week’s end.

I hate MediaWiki.

hcgtv · 2006-11-14 13:45:04

hakjoon wrote:

I hate MediaWiki.

Why was MediaWiki picked for Textbook?

hakjoon · 2006-11-14 14:17:14

At the time it happened I think because it was the product with the best multi-language support. Upgrading it is just a bear. You have to hunt down information all over the place. All the image paths broke yesterday and it took me two hours to find the setting that caused it, and that was after hunting down a the fact that they changed the name of one of the theme functions so our skin suddenly wouldn’t work. It’s just much more of a pain then it should be.

Makes me really appreciate everything Team Textpattern does to make upgrading TXP as painless as it is. Unfortunately I haven’t found anything else that wil take a MediaWiki data import.

hcgtv · 2006-11-14 15:14:19

I was just curious, I like knowing the deciding factor why one software is picked over another.

I’ve tried MediaWiki locally and yes it can be daunting to understand it all. It’s also not that quick at rendering the pages and I see my CPU usage go up while it’s doing it’s thing. Makes me appreciate small code bases like Textpattern.

I think the big issue with MediaWiki is that it uses a database as opposed to flat files, like many other Wikis do.

Mary · 2006-11-15 00:15:07

One pro is that a database makes for better (faster, optimized, etc) searching.

hakjoon · 2006-11-15 03:44:46

I don’t really have an issue with it using a DB. It’s kind of the same as far as I’m concerned. I don’t feel like MediaWiki is slow. It’s documentation just blows.

I do like docuwiki though. I would love to consider switching to it if there was a migration path.

hcgtv · 2006-11-15 05:31:36

hakjoon wrote:

I do like docuwiki though. I would love to consider switching to it if there was a migration path.

Somebody wrote a converter but it’s page by page at this moment.

You can make it look like MediaWiki, should you so desire, with the Monobook template. I’ve been playing with all kinds of templates lately, getting familiar with which ones fit different documentation project needs.

I came across this OpenOffice macro that will take an HTML page and create a Doku page, just cut and paste it in the wiki, it’s how I populate my wiki.

There’s a PunBB auth backend, so the forum users get instant access to the wiki, good bad or indifferent, the easier it is to participate, the more do.

I’ve been following and using DokuWiki for more than two years now, can you tell :)

hakjoon · 2006-11-18 00:56:58

Apparently they have changed how the sidebar customization works between 1.6 and 1.8 (I love the fact that this is documented NOWHERE in the release notes) So I need to figure out how to keep our changes before I update to 1.8

ugh.

Destry · 2006-11-18 10:14:17

hakjoon wrote: Its [MediaWiki’s] documentation just blows.

Yes, this is really my only beef with MediaWiki. That’s actually a good niche Web site for somebody. If a small band of MediaWiki users (from whatever background) got together and produced a site that served as a running, comprehensive system documentation source for MediaWiki, it would be extremely — EXTREMELY — popular and see tons of traffic almost immediately. Nothing fancy, just good MediaWiki documentation. If it were me, I wouldn’t run such a site with MediaWiki either, fock that. That community already had it’s chance to keep house and failed. No, if I were behind such a site I’d use a different publishing system, and it would be restricted to a core set of dedicated writers.

And it’s not just MediaWiki, there’s lots of other popular products out there that have documentation resources that absolutely suck. XAMPP is another one that comes to mind. All perfect examples of what happens when the documentation is left solely in the hands of developers.

Anyway, is there a 1.7 where details might have been noted?

jakob · 2006-11-18 11:08:24

BTW: Is there a way of bookmarking just the alphabetical tag listing (just the list itself) and setting it to open in the sidebar in firefox? I have this for HTML and CSS reference for the selfhtml site (info and example here) and it’s very handy: you click on the tag and the relevant page opens in the main window.

Thanks again for all you do for txp. The reference is a big help.

Last edited by jakob (2006-11-18 11:09:47)

hakjoon · 2006-11-18 15:07:28

Destry wrote:
Anyway, is there a 1.7 where details might have been noted?

I think I figured it out. I resaved the sidebar page (all our changes were still there they just were not showing up) and then everything went back to normal, So I should be able to get stuff in place tonight or tomorrow. The upgrade went pretty smoothly otherwise unlike the the move from 1.5 to 1.6 which had all sorts of issues.
There are some CSS issues in the preferences screens but nothing really big.

What drives me really crazy is that the dev team seems to not document much, realeasing the new version and letting the community figure out what changed. I mean 1.6 changed the name of a major skin system function yet that is nowhere in the release notes. Makes me really, really appreciate the time Sencer and Zem take to populate the FAQ every release.

jakob: That does seem very handy. I’ll have to see what needs to be done in order to enable something like that. Unfortunately I don’t understand german :)

Last edited by hakjoon (2006-11-18 15:17:55)

Destry · 2006-11-18 17:45:15

I think I figured it out. I resaved the sidebar page (all our changes were still there they just were not showing up) and then everything went back to normal,

Ah, I think I know what’s happening there, if I understand you right, and if so then this is just normal MW behavior. I’ve noted for a couple of versions now that when I make an edit to the sidebar, add/remove/change link(s), the change does not reflect for me until I logout and relogin again. I’m sure it reflects fine to everyone else, but as the admin making the change, you have to reset a session to see it yourself. Maybe that was it. Stupid, but that’s the way it’s been working in the past. Took me a couple times to figure that one out.

jakob · 2006-11-18 18:07:36

hakjoon: if you need a hand understanding the German, just let me know but it’s not all that interesting. The sidebar shows up in the FF sidebar exactly as you see it in the area marked “vorschau” (preview).
The self-html sidebar is much more complex than is required for txp as it shows HTML/CSS/JS and a couple of others and links to various articles depending upon whether it’s the description (b) or attribute (a), reference ® or w3c-spec (w)…

For TXP all you’d need is the list of tags with a link to the relevant textbook entry and to make it open in the main content window of the browser. If you want to get really keen, you could make a second tab with other important txp articles or a tab with common plug-in tags…

I used to use the word extract of the textbook entries made into a hyperlinked PDF as tag reference but it’s no longer up to date.

The rest of that page in German details how to install their sidebar in all the different browsers.

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#1 2006-11-13 01:47:50

[wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#2 2006-11-14 06:34:56

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#3 2006-11-14 13:45:04

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#4 2006-11-14 14:17:14

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#5 2006-11-14 15:14:19

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#6 2006-11-15 00:15:07

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#7 2006-11-15 03:44:46

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#8 2006-11-15 05:31:36

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#9 2006-11-18 00:56:58

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#10 2006-11-18 10:14:17

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#11 2006-11-18 11:08:24

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#12 2006-11-18 15:07:28

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#13 2006-11-18 17:45:15

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

#14 2006-11-18 18:07:36

Re: [wiki] Textbook Upgrades week of Nov. 13th

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