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#13 2008-08-04 10:46:46
- els
- Moderator
- From: The Netherlands
- Registered: 2004-06-06
- Posts: 7,458
Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
To be honest, Peter, I have to agree with Destry. It’s what I thought when I read your first post about this: Destry returned to the forums after a period of absence and immediately, out of the blue, offered to do a lot of work on Textbook that no one else so far has been inclined to do (either because of lack of time, or skills, or commitment, or whatever). So why on earth should we want to decline that offer, especially now that he has already done a considerable part of that work.
It’s definitely not that I don’t appreciate your effort – if Destry hadn’t come back here it would have been a totally different story – but as things are now I really think we should jump at the opportunity that someone with Destry’s skills and knowledge of the subject is willing to take Textbook to the level that is needed for it to become TXP’s main documentation.
I certainly don’t want to hurt your feelings, Peter, but I wouldn’t blame Destry for feeling offended.
(I haven’t had much spare time the last half year or so, and I’ll be away for a holiday until the end of this month, but I was planning to get more familiar with MW after that, to be able to contribute at least to Textbook’s content.)
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
Why all the fuss, Destry? As you said here, you’d be interested in a parallel dokuwiki effort. You said you were on holiday for 3 weeks and then were moving but should be clear after another week (very fast, btw), so by my reckoning you should be ready to start work today. So by making my idea public on Saturday, it became available for you to incorporate any of it into your design, listen to any discussion that might help you and come up with a much better design than perhaps you would originally have achieved.
I felt my ideas were worth listening to but in the same post mentioned above you did not answer my questions directly and left me feeling there was no room for discussion – that you were back again after two years to lay your style and AI on us again. How can that give me confidence when I look at the existing txb, one that you were the main instigator of, and see a mess? And that’s not just me that thinks that. And I mean the design, not just some of the content.
But your own wion site is very nicely designed so I’m interested to see what you can do. I didn’t want you to walk away without giving it a go, so I didn’t say anything till now.
I don’t want to get into anything personal but I will say that I wish you were straightforward like I am, would stop reading things into my words that I did not say, and not be so hasty to look for the negative when there are lots of positives. If you could do that I would be happy to work with you but if you continue as you are now, then there’s no way.
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#15 2008-08-04 12:55:46
- candyman
- Member
- From: Italy
- Registered: 2006-08-08
- Posts: 684
Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
The new tutorials are great. If there is another TextBook is better join the efforts and improve/change/redesign the existing one (which has a better URI, I founded) without starting with forks that lead to weakiness…
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
My version is not meant to be additional. It is all or nothing. The community will decide. If it becomes The Textbook it will move to textpattern.net. If not it will be binned. It’s got robots disallow by the way, so no dissolution of content.
If if becomes Textbook, there won’t be a great need for Hakjoon, but some help will be needed with permissions in the first instance. Also with setting it up, so there is some kind of cross-checking with forum registrations, similar to as it is now. Most of it the site will be outside the document root so security should be a minimal problem.
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
Ruud, Jonathan
I’ve altered the navigation somewhat. Is this more like it or were you thinking of something completely different?
The 101, 201, 301 etc are namespaces and changing them would cause great upheaval but could be done if it is essential. What is it about those numbers that you don’t like? If it’s because you want something more meaningful or instantly recognizable, has my change helped? If not, what alternatives do you suggest?
Note, I’ve put the language codes at the bottom because having both lang and nav at the top looked bad. I figured once someone has chosen a language they will navigate via the breadcrumbs because that keeps them in the same language. So language choice will be mostly a one-time thing. Also 70% of txp users use English (someone mentioned that figure on here before) so it’s better for the nav to go at the top because it goes to English namespaces only. With some php magic, ie if someone made a plugin, it would be easy, I think, to make it so the nav titles changed depending on the language namespace. As you can already see, this is done with the interface buttons, so I don’t think it’s much of a jump to extend that to the nav. I think I could do it myself with copy/paste hacking but I’d rather not mess it all up when it’s probably easy with a plugin. It would improve usability and friendliness a lot, methinks. Anyone interested?
Btw, I’ll be very interested in your IA and nav, Destry, and yours too Bert for that matter, if you’re going to extend your current system. I confess that I don’t really know what IA is, but guess it is how the information is organised so the site is most easily used, which is always interesting. If it isn’t that, then I am going to learn something! Please don’t let assumptions or lack of cohesion get in the way of joining in the discussion.
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
Some comments:
- “Welcome to Textbook for Textpattern!” – better to say “Textpattern documentation and help”, or something similar
- 101 etc is quite bad, not sure what you mean by name spaces…
- Tag should be more specific, something like “look up tags” or similar (note you have a listing of tags for 4.07 which is not out yet)
- In fact, I would change all the headers. For example: 1. Basic concepts 2. How do I? 3. Administration 4. Development 5. Reference
- You could add Admin tabs to the Administration area
Hope this is helpful.
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
Thanks for replying Jonathan, it helps me understand you a bit.
1. As we may all have different opinions, perhaps others input would help in coming to the best introductory title.
2. Twice you’ve said 101 etc is quite bad but not yet given a reason why. I think it’s quite good so who is right? Namespaces are like the section names, pagenames are the article names – both appear in the breadcrumbs. 001, 101, fr, de, wiki etc are namespaces. Deleting or altering them is a lot of work. You cannot have a namespace called, for example, ‘basic’ and then use ‘basique’, ‘base’, ‘basika’ or whatever for other languages. It has to be the same one or language translation of the same article will not work right. So 101 etc is great because everyone knows it in every language.
3. OK, I like the active verb and it fits with Start Here and Learn More
4. There’s so much content on Textbook that compartmentalizing it is difficult because of what should go where most logically. ‘Basic concepts’ only describes part of the contents of ‘Start Here’, ‘How do I?’ is ok for tutorials but there are and will be other things to go in ‘Learn More’. Admin only covers certain things, as does development and reference. So can you see the problem? This is why something neutral like 101, 201 etc does not mislead or cause confusion. I can see that the number progression might cause someone to believe it gets steadily harder when this is only partly true and perhaps 101, 201, 301, 401, 320 might be better. As I’ve said before the numbers are understood by all languages. They are also short and sweet, which is better for breadcrumbs and for scanning text. Still think 101 etc is bad?
5. Good idea, extra links in relevant places are always helpful.
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
Regarding the points raised by Jonathan:
- Yes, I agree. No need to say welcome… mentioning documentation and help instantly makes it clear what the user should expect to find here.
- 001, 101, 201… I don’t like ‘m for two reasons:
- the numbers remind me of a good old fashioned linear book that has to be read in that order (don’t get me wrong, I love reading books; just don’t think the format is good here).
- when I see 201 as a navigation link at the top, I have no idea what that links to. It doesn’t describe the contents of the link.
- “Tag” would fit nicely as a chapter of its own: Tag Reference… or inside Reference.
- That makes a lot of sense (to me). What I find difficult to understand with “learn more”, intermediate and advanced is that the user is expected to know which things are easy or advanced use of TXP. I think in reality the user wants to do something and is primarily interested in finding how to do it. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to give some indication (in a howto/tutorial section) of how difficult a task is, but that’s only interesting once you’ve actually found it. For example, I would think understanding textile and grasping the concept of categories/sections falls under intermediate/advanced, while installing TXP is relatively easy and would be in the “start here” section, since that’s what you typically do first before you can actually use it.
- Admin tabs seems to be a mix of a reference guide for all admin side features and an explanation of concepts. Difficult to fit anywhere in the chapter list on the left side.
I’m not sure how well this would fit in the design, but perhaps the Tag reference could be a small set of links just above the Admin Tabs column on the right:
TAG REFERENCE- alphabetical
- organizational
PS. I’m mostly wearing a ‘user hat’ in this discussion. I don’t care who uses what type of wiki for Textbook as long as it’s ends up as a fantastic and easy to use collection of documentation from the user point of view.
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
- - I agree with Ruud – the numbering system is not descriptive. >101 is no longer self-explanatory. Alternate namespaces:
- 101 -> Intro (/intro)
- 201 & 301 -> Tutorials (/tutorials)
- 401 -> Development topics (/developer)
- 501 -> Reference (/reference or /ref)
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
- Done
- OK, I’ll make one last stand for 101 etc. First, for newbies, it is meant to be read in that order, at least 101 is, then they’ll search around. Secondly, 201 now has meaning at the top because ‘Learn More’ is with it. In the breadcrumbs it also has meaning because all you have is 001 > 201 > article-name when you’re reading an article, so you know that 201 will take you back to where you just came from. If you landed via Google, 201 won’t make sense I agree, but you would look at the top line and navigate from there, so no problemo. Please believe me that learning the numbers is very easy, almost instant. For me, navigation is actually easier using just 101, 201, 301 without the descriptions than it is with them. They are closer together, easier to recognize instantly. But I’m used to it of course. I really do believe everyone would navigate with them just as easily as with words after a few goes. For complete newbies, no, but for anyone who’s used it 3 or 4 times, the numbers are a cinch and I think they are worth sticking with.
- Tag is already a chapter of its own. It doesn’t have a number because it’s a 3-letter word and is central to txp so I think it should stand on its own.
- Installing is already in ‘101’ although there’s a link to it from elsewhere. I hope I’ve put everything essential to beginners in 101 because that was my intention. I hoped that the Learn More list on the front page would give enough of a clue as to what to expect in that section. The tutorials there are very simple to do and the only reason they are not in 101 is because they aren’t essential for understanding how to get going with txp. A person might want something admin or reference before needing those tutorials, so I appreciate how Intermediate and Advanced aren’t ideal. Perhaps Administration, Development and Reference are good after all, so long as ‘& More’ is added to them, at least on the respective content pages themselves. Is How Do I? better than Learn More, though, or Basic Concepts better than Start Here? It would be great if someone could come up with one-word alternatives that fit the bill. Just seen your post, jm. ‘Intro’ is short and sweet. I still think tutorials is too narrow though.
- I put the Admin tabs in 101 and on front page because they need to be understood early on. Most people can pick up how to use them intuitively I should think, and I was tempted to drastically cut down the descriptions, but the concepts and finer details are there in case anyone needs them.
I don’t see how your tag reference, alphabetical, organization idea would help. Just click on Tag and it’s all there plain to see. For yourself and users who only use txb for tag reference, just click on the link at the top of the page, no need to scroll.
Great that you’ve got your ‘user hat’ on, Ruud. I much appreciate your time and effort to try and get this thing right.
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Re: [wiki] A New Textbook
I disagree – tutorials is generic enough to encompass multiple articles. The /tutorials page can have headings that sort articles by category, but the root namespace would still be “tutorials.”
I think the problem with linear organization is users won’t head to the Textbook to learn all at once – they’ll go to look up a tag or feature. However, you could create an introductory article that links to existing articles with your 101, 201, whatever format as headings.
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