[docs] Github wiki

hcgtv · 2015-06-29 15:17:27

philwareham wrote #292272:

I’m not really sure what is being said here, sorry – I can give you a dump of the MediaWiki if you need one, it takes time to export from the wiki though as I have to take each section as an XML file (they don’t give you an easy method to export from their software).

I was looking at getting a database dump, that way I could load it up on a local copy of MediaWiki. I really have no use for anything else, because I could easily go scraping page per page, in a variety of ways. I’m more interested in historical info, page creation, who changed what, etc.

philwareham · 2015-06-29 15:23:39

hcgtv wrote #292273:

I was looking at getting a database dump, that way I could load it up on a local copy of MediaWiki

I can give you an SQL dump, yes? PM me and I’ll give you a download link.

michaelkpate · 2015-06-29 15:44:42

I would be happy to help with the documentation editing whichever format is decided upon. I am pretty sure I volunteered at least once before.

philwareham · 2015-06-29 15:54:59

michaelkpate wrote #292275:

I would be happy to help with the documentation editing whichever format is decided upon. I am pretty sure I volunteered at least once before.

Great! Will keep you posted on the developments.

Destry · 2015-06-29 16:08:03

hcgtv wrote #292271:

You know Destry, I’ve linked to my Textpattern Template Tags site on a few occasions in threads where you were very active. Not once have you said anything, you dismiss the post reply, like I never posted anything.

Sorry for the confusion, Bert. I’ve been away from the computer today more than at it, so I haven’t had a chance to respond to everything. Also, I’ve actually not been too active in the forum for a while, though I’ve been trying to turn that around lately (but maybe I shouldn’t).

I’m well aware of your Txp tags site and have been for a long time (years?). As I understood it, you did that version in a way that appeals to more experienced design/developer types. Get straight to the meat and potatoes, as it were. Right? Great! Other than that I’m not sure what you want me to say about it. Good job? Atta boy? Consider it done.

There in lies the problem with Textpattern, contributions outside of the walled in Textpattern world are not really welcomed.

I think you’re confusing insignificant me with the project, which I’m not affiliated with other than being a self-admitted tree-shaker and boat-rocker.

Sure, dive in and contribute, if you can gain access that is. I remember when I first joined the community, it was a mission to get access to the wiki, and then your access would go poof on a MediaWiki update.

That’s kind of a general wave of the hand to nothing specific, isn’t it?

Manually creating accounts was always necessary because of spam issues. And there were always at least two people to contact for accounts when wanted, and we did ask for a few days patience as people got to them. This seemed to work for most people.

The wiki was not updated often enough, as a matter fact, and on at least two occasions it changed servers on Joyent’s end which caused all kinds of system and content problems. That wasn’t my doing or within my means to fix.

If wiki user accounts were affected then too, I’m sorry, but I don’t recall hearing anything about it.

Btw, in case there’s a misunderstanding, I’ve not been in charge of the .net wiki for a while. I woke up one morning and my admin credentials to the server were revoked and never returned. I didn’t mind, actually. One less thing to worry about. The same thing happened to me on TXP Mag, for that matter, around the same time, but that’s a different topic.

Yet here we sit, with TXP branded sites like TXP Magazine, with no new content in 2 years. Yeah, we’ll get to it, and the Internet years wizz by.

I guess we are going to talk about it. Okay.

Like I said, I had my server rights taken from me on the magazine. Security call. Change of template management routine. Txp privilege. Whatever. Nothing to be done from my side. But it’s a bad thing to do to an Editor of a magazine, especially when the Editor could have independently made needed front-end changes to conform the magazine’s layout and presentation to newly planned (at the time) content directions. Instead, what happened about that time is Phil (not to single Phil out), officially became part of Txp’s team (head designer), and in that new power made the decision to make TXP Mag’s presentation conform to some as yet unseen brand design.

(For “strategic” reasons (corresponding with audience reach) that I’ve made clear since day-1 of being Editor, I don’t think the magazine, as I conceived it, should conform to Txp’s standard project brand. But that’s neither here nor there now. The vision I had is a failed experiment.)

So, not only was there a bottleneck on the architecture and presentation, but, as Bloke has mentioned elsewhere, try as I might to get contributing authors so it wasn’t just me doing all the writing, I couldn’t get any by the fourth issue, except from Bloke, who was already contributing more than his share, on top of being a dev. That doesn’t really work for a magazine. If I’m going to do all the writing, then I’ll just do it at my own website, or create a new domain with one of these fancy new TLD’s, like textpattern.reports, or whatever.

Thus why the magazine has been quiet: no brand, no architecture, no contributing authors. I guess this community is too small for a magazine.

Destry, I could make a clone of the wiki in an afternoon. The reason I wanted the dump was to see historical changes to pages, who changed what and why – especially the tag reference.

I don’t care if you want a dump. Have a dump. I’m not in control of it. I was only speaking for the direction of future user docs and trying to save you, or anyone else, the misery of dealing with old content. Sorry for any “miscontrusion” there. Maybe if you had said what you wanted a dump file for to start with, I wouldn’t have unintentionally got on your bad side.

There’s more to running an Open Source project than just buying up sites to protect your brand.

Sing it, brother. You’re preaching to the choir here.

Can we step back and start over?

gaekwad · 2015-06-29 16:25:55

philwareham wrote #292251:

Please don’t rush into anything straight away – I thought we were going to use Jekyl via GitHub Pages for hosting this stuff, not the GitHub Wiki.

+1. One of the stumbling blocks of the wiki previously was the barrier to entry and relative unfriendliness. GitHub has a much, much better way of doing this kind of thing.

hcgtv · 2015-06-29 16:44:40

Destry wrote #292278:

Can we step back and start over?

Sure, I’m easy.

Sorry for taking my TXP frustrations out on you, it’s the reason I stepped away from the forum for 4 years, I was none too happy and rather than sound disgruntled all the time, I stepped back.

Moving forward, I’ll hang for a bit, see if things do actually change with the new blood, like Stef and Phil, what happened to Gocom?. If not, I’ll ride into the sunset, taking with me valuable knowledge that I learned from this excellent community.

There’s one constant in this universe, and that’s change.

Textpattern, the project, has two choices, move forward or retreat, it can’t stand still. The reason Textpattern has lived a quiet existence is that there hasn’t been any forking activity since xPattern, note that the xpattern.net domain points to Textpattern.com now (name brand protection).

I would like to seriously get involved, be part of the team and all that, there’s probably others that feel the same way. It’s been like that for many years, people asking to participate falling on deaf ears, I could dig up the relevant forum posts if anyone is interested in the History of Textpattern.

Keep in mind that xPattern sprung up because those in charge refused to open a branch on SVN for participation by non-core developers, then we forked.

Bloke · 2015-06-29 17:28:11

hcgtv wrote #292281:

I would like to seriously get involved, be part of the team and all that

Great. Whaddya need specifically? Where do you see yourself adding most value? Code? Docs? New sites? Support? Branding? Evangelism? Marketing? All of the above?

I dunno where this “devs hold the keys and nobody’s invited” thing came from. Perhaps it’s a relic from a bygone era. I’ve been asking for aeons for helpers to help motivate me to do stuff. People make noise, come forward, get the access they need and then (as wet eloquently put it) : crickets.

With Github a reality, things have improved drastically. And I’m feeling the vibe again after a period of frustration.

But everything still comes down to the age old enemies: time and resources. Since I sadly can’t manufacture the former, the more of the latter we can get the better.

Destry · 2015-06-29 17:47:08

There’s more to running an Open Source project than just buying up sites to protect your brand.

Coming back to that notion…

Textgarden is now going away in favor for themes.textpattern.com, I think. Smart. And when the wiki docs are vetted to github then .net isn’t needed either. Not really. Redirect that to Github. And, frankly, .org hasn’t been worthwhile in ages, so could put that on ice too (probably a painful subject for Stef, but…).

That’s a lot less domain real estate to worry about in terms of content, development, and branding, thus should help Phil focus on .com more.

Theoretically speaking.

Bloke · 2015-06-29 17:57:04

Destry wrote #292278:

I had my server rights taken from me on the magazine.

I didn’t realise. If I’d known I’d have tried to sort it out, sorry.

Haven’t tried to log in for aeons so my account might well have gone too…

Bloke · 2015-06-29 18:05:17

Destry wrote #292285:

[.org] probably a painful subject for Stef

Not especially. I don’t have the technical smarts to integrate it with all the myriad mechanisms there are out there for source management. Github, BitBucket, personal website… etc.

But I think it’s important that there’s a central repository with a cached copy of the latest plugin from every author. Because too many times plugin authors go away or rejig their sites and things become unavailable, which inconveniences the community. So even if the repo is not the endpoint for developers, it needs to have a means of spidering content (or being informed, simply and easily from approved authors) from an author’s external repo and storing their wares.

From the front-side, the only thing it needs is:

good search
a way to indicate compatibility with Txp versions
a wiki-esque page per plugin for curated content (extra release notes, idiosyncratic behaviour that might trip people up, things that need to be done to make version a.b.c work with Txp x.y.z, that sort of thing)
maybe some periodic “these plugins work well together” articles, perhaps with examples from an author who has put a site together and would like to reveal the magic behind it

Probably not rocket science. See previous comment regarding time and resource constraints. Anyone with any free time or energy can have whatever support we can give to help make that happen.

Destry · 2015-06-29 18:30:33

Bloke wrote #292286:

I didn’t realise. If I’d known I’d have tried to sort it out, sorry.

Haven’t tried to log in for aeons so my account might well have gone too…

A minor annoyance at the time, and a non-issue now. Only my reputation as an editor was tarnished. :/

Truth is, as I mentioned to Bert, the community is too small for a magazine. We gave it a good shot, but neither the writers nor audience is there. How the mag is structured and branded is entirely insignificant in comparison.

In another thread I happened to just notice today, there was an idea for a newsletter. That is a much more workable option for Txp right now, and a txp mono-brand vibe would be appropriate, but you still need the editor.

hcgtv · 2015-06-29 18:36:42

Bloke wrote #292283:

Great. Whaddya need specifically? Where do you see yourself adding most value? Code? Docs? New sites? Support? Branding? Evangelism? Marketing? All of the above?

Let me know what’s on the todo list, and I’ll let you know where I can help.

I already have my Textpattern branded shirt to wear when I’m working.

Can’t wait for the weekly status meetings where I can ask Wet poignant questions, like:

Where does Dean fit into the picture, I know he’s the father of Textpattern but he’s not been around for years?
Why can’t we own the Textpattern domain, set to expire on July 26, 2017?
Who do we actually work for, is this an Open Source project, or are we building value add for an eventual sale to the highest bidder.
What happened to all of Zem’s TXP work, especially interested in his work on templating.

That’s it for now, I’m just full of questions :)

philwareham · 2015-06-29 18:53:25

Hi Bert,

I’ve emailed you the latest snapshot of Textpattern’s Wiki. I will continue some setup of the GitHub Pages site tomorrow in between my day job.

Bloke · 2015-06-29 19:16:23

hcgtv wrote #292290:

I’m just full of questions :)

And that’s why we love having you around. Without questions, things stay the same.

Let me know what’s on the todo list, and I’ll let you know where I can help.

In no particular order:

Marketing, evangelising, brand building, see point (3) of your questions, he says only semi-jokingly ;-)
Site building / content: .org, Themes, Documentation, and .com. Docs exist for The Txp Voice (a.k.a. the Style Guide) that I’m sure Destry will be able to furnish you with. ~~I hunted in Google Docs but came up empty~~ Ah, here it is – let me know if you can’t access it and I’ll tweak permissions. Last time I checked, it laid the groundwork for the tone toward which we should be aiming. The crux of it was common sense: accessible, not overly corporate, and not first person unless necessary. Something like that.
Code. Code. Code:
- I’m going to iteratively tinker with unlimited custom fields in a branch. I have the bare admin-side structure working: a few tweaks and it should at least be viewable and playable, even if not very functional yet. But NOT for people who have glz_cf installed (yet) because it needs a component in there to stop it trampling over your data. Anyway, roll out from there. Any help once I commit the branch, welcome.
- Ditto Themes. I have it set out straight in my head, and the first pass (the simplest Pages, Forms, Styles only, with file system integration), is not hard at all. Again, a new branch for that will be forthcoming (as soon as I’ve committed this first custom-fields branch) and we’ll go from there, building on top of it to expand the functionality. Help appreciated.
- Admin side layout tinkering and integration into master branch. Inline help. A collapsing system for the tag builders. Pophelp improvements. Rolling language packs into core instead of relying on the RPC server.
- i18n: plans for multi-linguality are afoot. I can dig them out if you like and anyone who wants to run with them or improve them can do so.
- Documentation — even just DocBlocks for the remaining functions in the code would be a massive help. I switched over to an unregistered beta of Sublime Text after reading a blog post by our very own Andy Carter and the DocBlockr plugin is damn handy as it analyses your function signature and inserts a DocBlock template with as much detail as it can glean, all automatically filled in with just four keystrokes. Takes a load of the drudgery out of documentation.
- Migrating more stuff to Objects instead of functions. Mainly grunt work, with some opportunities for making things better.
- Optimisations if necessary (see Ruud/etc tag parser speed enhancements).

Any and all of the above would be amazing if you could get stuck in. For the code side, fire up your Github account, clone the repo and get those Pull Requests or feature branches in! Thanks.

EDIT: btw, this isn’t a list of what will necessarily drop in 4.6.0, but it’s all slated for the 4.6.x family, among other things like improving the Images panel (see the tom_image_grid plugin for ideas on where things might be heading), improving image handling on the Write panel, and allowing the panels to be rearranged for workflow using drag ‘n drop.

Last edited by Bloke (2015-06-29 20:20:49)

Textpattern CMS support forum

#31 2015-06-29 15:17:27

Re: [docs] Github wiki

philwareham wrote #292272:

#32 2015-06-29 15:23:39

Re: [docs] Github wiki

hcgtv wrote #292273:

#33 2015-06-29 15:44:42

Re: [docs] Github wiki

#34 2015-06-29 15:54:59

Re: [docs] Github wiki

michaelkpate wrote #292275:

#35 2015-06-29 16:08:03

Re: [docs] Github wiki

hcgtv wrote #292271:

#36 2015-06-29 16:25:55

Re: [docs] Github wiki

philwareham wrote #292251:

#37 2015-06-29 16:44:40

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Destry wrote #292278:

#38 2015-06-29 17:28:11

Re: [docs] Github wiki

hcgtv wrote #292281:

#39 2015-06-29 17:47:08

Re: [docs] Github wiki

#40 2015-06-29 17:57:04

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Destry wrote #292278:

#41 2015-06-29 18:05:17

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Destry wrote #292285:

#42 2015-06-29 18:30:33

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Bloke wrote #292286:

#43 2015-06-29 18:36:42

Re: [docs] Github wiki

Bloke wrote #292283:

#44 2015-06-29 18:53:25

Re: [docs] Github wiki

#45 2015-06-29 19:16:23

Re: [docs] Github wiki

hcgtv wrote #292290:

Board footer