Help:Editing

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Revision as of 22:17, 9 August 2007 by Sardisson (Talk | contribs)
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Contents

Information on Editing and Wiki Syntax

  • From the Media Wiki site
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table
  • From the Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page

Stylistic and Editorial Policies for the NeoWiki

had some rules on the old wiki. They went something like:

  • Keep the pages short. If a page is long, it probably contains too many subjects and should be split into two or more pages.
  • MediaWiki splits title words on spaces (and transforms them into underscores in page URLs). Name new pages with a descriptive title.
NeoJInfo is a bad page name/title.
Information about NeoOffice or NeoOffice Information are good page names/titles.

Style and Formatting Guide

When adding new information to the wiki or editing existing information, always adhere to the NeoWiki Style guidelines below:

  • Menus, submenus, and menu items - always use sentences, not "->" or other shorthand. And not just sentences, but sentences that instruct the user on what to do (pull down menus, select buttons, check boxes, etc.) in the order that they appear to the user. E.g., "In the View menu, under Toolbars, select Customize." Names of the menu, submenu, or item are boldface.
    • Use the Menu template: {{menu|Name of Menu or Menu Item}}
  • "Dialogue/window titles" or "Preference Option Name" - currently, sometimes boldface, sometimes in "quotes"
    The format for the above elements has yet to be frozen; they should stand out but also more easily be distinguished from menus and filenames.
    • Use the Window template for dialogue/window titles: {{Window|Title of Window}}
    • Use the prefName template for preferences/options (selecting a radio button, checkbox, or item from a pop-up menu): {{prefName|Text of Preference/Option}}
    • Use the Section template for names of sub-sections in different preference windows (e.g. Printer Warnings in the Print preferences) or for tabs in a tabbed window: {{section|Name of Preference Section or Tab}}
      See Image:Section_vs_prefName.png for an illustration.
  • Buttons - this format needs to decided upon yet. For now, treat as above.
    • Use the Button template: {{button|Name of Button}}
  • Keyboard commands (e.g., pressing return or ⌘-S, but not typing a string of text): {{key|name of key/shortcut combination}}
  • Filenames - standalone—not part of a path—should be boldface.
    • Application Names - when referring to another application in an article (e.g., "Open Activity Monitor and click…"), use boldface.
  • Paths (including paths ending with a filename) or Terminal commands - use the <tt>typewriter</tt> tag for single lines or, heaven forbid, the <pre>
    preformatted text
    </pre> tag for blocks of code.
  • Use NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org, not Neo and OOo (in certain cases, such as the trademark guidelines or press materials, use NeoOffice® instead).
  • While the MediaWiki editing guidelines referenced above call for authors and editors to always sign contributions, the NeoWiki does not adhere to that practice in articles. Similar to an encyclopedia, we want to present a unified article, unbroken by editing dates and user signatures.
    • When adding items to Discussion (Talk:) pages, do sign your additions/comments.

Mac vs. Windows/*nix

Since the goal of Neo/J is making OOo more Mac-like, we should always prefer "Mac conventions" where possible; e.g., sending someone to the Activity Monitor utility to quit a hung process instead of ps -aux | grep blah, and using the Preferences... item in the NeoOffice menu rather than the Windows-like Tools menu, Options item.

If something can't be done (or can't be done as easily) without firing up the Terminal, fine, but let's prefer Mac-friendly instructions. (This also conforms with Waldo's points 3-6 in the style guide discussion.)

Notes about URLs in Templates

When including URLs to trinity (or similar pages with ? = & and other characters in them) in templates directly, the characters must be encoded or they'll fubar the display of the template (it seems the = are the most problematic; who'd have thought!?):

From MediaWiki, with a few additions they missed:

Conversion (hexadecimal ASCII value with a percent sign in front): 

 "   #   $   %   &   '   (   )   *   ,   :   ;   <   >   [   ]   ^   `   {   |   }   ?   =
%22 %23 %24 %25 %26 %27 %28 %29 %2a %2c %3a %3b %3c %3e %5b %5d %5e %60 %7b %7c %7d %3f %3d

Available Templates

Here is an incomplete list of the templates already started for the NeoWiki. (As time permits, we will try to better document the use of them)

Editing help for Templates

See also Guidelines for Translating the NeoWiki#Notes for information on translating templates and the new and deprecated naming schemes for such templates.

( and Phillipe have added several new templates recently [Nov 2005]) - All Templates

Administrative Templates

Formatting templates

Content Templates

Wiki Translation Templates

There are also a series of style and content templates specific to the wiki translation efforts; see Guidelines for Translating the NeoWiki for more info about these templates. Please do not replace these templates with other templates or use these templates for other purposes. A non-exhaustive list (will grow as more languages are added) follows.

Content

Formatting

Sandbox

established the Test page for everyone to use to try out editing and wiki techniques without fear of messing up any of the existing pages. If you want to experiment with how the wiki works, do so on that page.


Style Guide Discussion

We should eventually move this section into Help:Editing:Discussion

Do we need to have a "style guide" to standardize how we represent certain functions or types of info?

We have three "regular editors" now, plus a fair amount of legacy content from the old wiki (which had another handful of editors/contributors). We seem to represent only one type of thing consistently among the three of us + legacy content:

  • paths (incl. paths ending with a filename) or terminal commands

Other things seem to vary widely:

  • Menus submenus (: or -> or something else) Waldo says always use sentences, not "->". And not just sentences, but sentences that instruct the user on what to do (pull down menus, select buttons, check boxes, etc.) in the order that they appear to the user. Ie, "In the View menu, under Toolbars, select Customize."
  • Menus (standalone in text, i.e., Choose the Tools menu--sometimes boldface)
  • Filenames (standalone--should be boldface)
  • "Dialogue/window titles" or "Preference Option Name" (sometimes boldface, sometimes in "quotes")

Should we agree on a wiki style for the latter types and adhere to it from here on out, and clean up the older stuff as we get time or modify those article?

--sardisson 04:27, 29 Apr 2005 (CDT)

Good question. Having worked on a Gentoo wiki or too, i have to say I was impressed with their templates that give a unified look to the whole thing. I think a style guide is not a bad idea.. here are some suggestions.

  1. bold all filenames, menu items, application names, or any text string that appears on-screen. this will facilitate readability tremendously, especially when following instructions.
  2. put "pre" or "tt" tags around all typed Terminal commands (or use something similar to the gentoo templates.)
  3. When describing procedures to be done that involve rooting through menus, list the menu items in the order they appear to the user. for example: "In the menu bar, under the File item, select Save."
  4. I think that writing directions out in English has several advantages over the "Item 1 > Item 2" method of indicating options/navigation. For one thing, there is not much room for misunderstanding when you say "Make sure that the whatever radio button is selected." or "Press the Ok button to continue." Also, it is more accessible, I think, to a newbie user who may not be familiar with the 'item->item' shorthand.
  5. When issuing a series of instructions, I think it's always a good idea to express to the user what will happen next, ie "Press the Ok button. A window labeled Preferences will appear."

I'm sure I'll think of more style stuff... this is just a start.. I think the gentoo wiki templates really help unify the site and the navigation stuff facilitates site organization and helps you get around easily.

--Waldo 04:46, 29 Apr 2005 (CDT)

FWIW here is a sample HOWTO I wrote for gentoo. This was the first one I wrote, and it was really easy w/the templates... see how it fits w/the entire site?

--Waldo 05:25, 29 Apr 2005 (CDT)

I'd really like to differentiate window/item titles from filenames and menus; otherwise, I've updated my list of style to match Waldo's text description.

--sardisson 22:34, 2 May 2005 (CDT)

Mac vs. Windows/*nix

Since the goal of Neo/J is making OOo more Mac-like, we should always prefer "Mac conventions" where possible; e.g., sending someone to the Activity Monitor utility to quit a hung process instead of ps -aux | grep blah, and using the Preferences... item in the NeoOffice menu rather than the Windows-like Tools menu, Options item.

If something can't be done (or can't be done as easily) without firing up the Terminal, fine, but let's prefer Mac-friendly instructions. This also conforms with Waldo's points 3-6 above.

--sardisson 04:51, 14 Jul 2005 (CDT)



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