Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
[wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
This topic is intended to serve as a quick reference for the Forum community about the latest happenings with/in the TextBook wiki (changes, enhancements, important news, etc.). Here we go…
As of right now, with respect to the redesign process:
17 Nov 05: Wiki system is finally upgraded after a long shelf-life…leap-frogging from 1.3.x to 1.5.2
20 Nov 05: New left navigation begins falling into place. Navigation feedback is still being solicited. As well as feedback about page titles.
21 Nov 05: Discovered that a small settings mod was not carried over in the upgrade (process was done correctly, old modifications were simply overlooked), which allowed for anonymous self-registration of spammers. Spam attacks ensued, naturally. Problem was addressed (plugged the hole, banned the spam IPs, and deleted the spam in the English pages). Translators will need to check their language pages for spam problems. Spam tended to be added in one of two ways, either by…
- replacing the page altogether with new spam content,
- or by adding the spam at the end fo the file as a non-descript link. Sometimes it was just in the code with no link at all.
A majority number of the spam hits were to the Talk or Discussion pages of the actual pages themselves, which didn’t have content to begin with, and which of course are much less apparent; hence, translators should check the Talk and Discussion pages as well as the default pages.
Other things on the immediate horizon include:
- RSS Feeds
- Clean URLs
- A TxB skin
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
I have established a new TxB skin for the wiki, which at the moment looks exactly like the old, adulterated monobook skin, and thus why there’s no visual change. However, getting the skin files in place was the first step, so we can now move on to the gloss.
If you want to comment, please do so in the wiki planning thread. Thanks.
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
There’s been a bit of shuffling with the direction of the TextBook redesign, but as it stands — and as it’s moving forward — design and content organization…
- follows this planning schematic (post any comments in that thread),
- is based on all the great community feedback received,
- including mary’s ideas about bridging the wiki with official documention,
- and inclusive of using TextBook as a FAQ internationalization platform.
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
Default TextBook Skin
In case anyone is a bonehead like me, you need to go into your preferences and change your skin selection to the new TextBook default option if you want to see that skin consistently when logged in and out of TextBook. As a result of forgetting about this, and leaving my option selected as monobook, I’ve succeeded in mangling the original MonoBook skin even more than it was before.
If you think something looks wrong, check your preferences and make sure you have TextBook selected. Anyway, you are recommended to use the TextBook skin, as that is the only one that will be supported in terms of customizations. It’s a slow work in progress, but should get better with time as the complicated backend is slowly waded through.
EDIT: <strike>Sorry folks, MediaWiki is choking on the TextBook skin. I don’t know why. The built-in skins have deep hooks and I apparently can’t find all the syntax that needs changed. So stick with the monobook skin. I’ll have to modify that to be what we want, because it’s the only one that seems to play nice with the rest of the code. What a pain.</strike>
EDIT 2: Sorry again, problem was me…accidently deleted a closing curly bracket in the stylesheets and that put the layout in a tailspin. All should be good now. As before, you should go with the TextBook skin.
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
Images Used in TextBooK
It was recently discovered that images were broken when we leap-frogged from version 1.3.9 to 1.5.2. In the older version, MediaWiki used a very strange, archiving process on the backend; essentially auto storing images into a weird structure of folders with meaningless names. The new version of MediaWiki uses a much more human friendly process, where images are uploaded to a single “images” directory. Yeah, you’d think that would be the normal way, well thankfully it now is. Anyway, all images are now working again in the new system.
A couple of worthwhile notes from this whole process:
First, the new system includes a cool new image gallery utility page, which is essentially an image management interface that can be used by TxB editors to manage all images uploaded into TextBook. A mime type can even be configured in one’s browser to link your browser with the preferred image editing application so authors can more easily keep their images up do date and visually correct. Anybody who adds images should probably take adavantage of this if technically feasible. (To find out more, click any image in the gallery and scroll down to the File History section for the image. You’ll see two links concerned with setting up an external application. Use at your own risk.)
Second, it was clear from doing the image house cleaning that we need a better image naming strategy for new images: yes, a practical file naming convention that people can use. We’ll need to come up with something and update the image upload instructions. This is nececessary for at least three important reasons:
- To prevent overwriting eachothers’ images (images having overly nondescript names).
- To indicate at a glance what article a given image(s) belongs to, and in what order in the article (e.g., Fig 1, Fig 2, etc.)
- To provide a very helpful grouping mechanism in the server directory. I.e., all images in a given article should be named in such a way that they are grouped together in the server’s “images” directory”. This is especially powerful when considered in reflection of #2.
As you can see, a convention here is best for this to 1) tell from a glance in the image gallery what image belongs to which article; 2) to ensure images aren’t being overwritten on the server; and 3) to keep images grouped in an organzied way on the server tree.
Third, some cool things were realized about using MediaWiki syntax for As for easily positioning images on a page. We should probably get some custom help put down, but see WikiPedia’s Extended Image Syntax for some great pointers to get started. Keep in mind not every possibility is going to be the right choice for positioning depending on size of image, whether a “pre” tag is used nearby after the image, etc. We probably need some standards so pages are not radically different looking between authors; that’s not what a “user manual” is about. One thing that I see being useful is the position right or position left feature for images that are small or have a greater vertical dimension than horizontal. Good stuff. There’s also a thumbnail feature too that could be useful for overly large images, though in my opinion, such images should be avoided to begin with, if possible.
Fourth, authors need to be more careful about image byte size and physical dimensions. Some images currently used are pretty large and questionable; authors should really be as economical as possible when creating images, even really thinking if an image is needed at all. If you can clearly and simply describe something in text to avoid a giant image, then go with the text. If you can’t avoid a large image, then try using the syntax to make the image a thumbnail that can be expand in it’s own window. Again, see Extended Image Syntax for pointers.
At the same time, every images should be making use of the “description” in the syntax, which is essentially the images title attribute. Descriptions should be brief and indicate the images position in the article (Figure 1: details…, Figure 2: details…, Figure 3: details…, etc.)
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
TextBook Image Manager
To make it easier for would be authors in TextBook, we have added a new role in TextBook management, TextBook Image Manager (see notes), and Andreas is now serving in that role (he’s also the TextBook translation lead for German). Basically, you tell him what you need and he’ll create it for your article. This saves you a lot of time that can be spent on your text. Andreas will be writing up new steps for what to do at How do I add images for an article, and he’ll also be focusing on the Administration Panel pages first. If you would like to help him out, you can certainly ask him.
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
I am happy to report that in the effort to bridge TextBook and the FAQs more coherently (as a unified documentation effort), all Textpattern developers now have TextBook accounts and are active contributors to wiki documentation.
I would also like to bring everyone’s attention to the wiki’s Community Portal page which is now serving as the Make a Suggestion resource for all things TextBook. This page is also immediately accessible from the wiki’s left navigation under User Contributions.
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
Spanish Translation
I’m happy to report that TextBook now has a Spanish language LGT, juanjonavarro. If anyone else would like to assist with Spanish translation efforts in TextBook, please contact Juan.
Welcome Juan!
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
Account Requests
From this point forward, until further notice, Hakjoon will be the point man for all new TextBook account Requests. The documentation has been updated. I will take his place as the second. I have a new family addition arriving soon and this switch in role will help leverage the admin responsibilities a bit.
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
TextBook’s New Clothes
David_1cog has devoted significant time and effort at cleaning up the extensive and bloated CSS files that define the TextBook skin.
Notes on his work:
- David says no hacks, and that’s a tall order considering the crop of hacks he had to sow under.
- supports standards-compliant browsers (and IE5.5 + 6 via conditional comments)
- original CSS total = 56KB (9 files), new CSS total = 24KB (6 files)
He even made a few aesthetic changes that I had left hanging in the wind.
He’s asked that we keep an eye on problems. If you have any, report them here.
(Thanks for your dedication, David!)
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
TWO NEW SECTIONS
Turorials
Tutorials. Are meant to be short how-to-do-somethings that are frequently asked about here in the forum. The idea is to capture the ideas and write them up and concise statements of the objective/problem and a stepwise walkthrough of the solution.
Article Contributions
Article Contributions. Another new section meant for the complete articles by independant (or collaborative) authors who have graciously contributed them to TextBook for posterity, nurturing, and/or translation. Mark “Remillard” Norton has launched this initiative with his original works such as Textpattern 101.
Last edited by Destry (2006-07-28 10:29:01)
Offline
Re: [wiki] [TxB] Latest Happenings
SERVER CHANGE
As of right this minute, please don’t make any new additions to TextBook or you risk losing those changes.
We, with the help of Pedro, are moving TextBook to it’s new server home (from robson-old to robson (new)). It looks like it will also be taking on the URL of textbook.textpattern.net
One thing we have noticed with the preliminary switch is that some of the language characters get mangled. So far it looks like it’s only a problem with Chinese. Doing a simple copy of the old text over the transported text seems to easily fix it. I’ll need to do this myself. I’ll try and get everything I see, but I can’t guarantee I’ll get everything.
Problem seems to be slightly more complicated…please pick up discussion here.
Update: The new location is now live and all new wiki work (additions/edits) should take place there only now. URLs will be rerouted on 1 August 2006, but you are encouraged to start using the new domain for all new wiki links you create: http://textbook.textpattern.net.
Last edited by Destry (2006-07-30 12:08:35)
Offline