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Help:Editing
From NeoWiki
Contents |
Information on Editing and Wiki Syntax
- From the Media Wiki site
- From the Wikipedia
Stylistic and Editing 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 underscores. Name new pages with a descriptive title.
- NeoJInfo is a bad page name/title.
- Information_about_NeoOffice/J or NeoOffice/J_Information are good page names/titles.
- Always add a comment (summary) of your change.
- Join us in Talk:Main_Page for more rules and the latest wiki-team info!
Style/Formatting Guide
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.
- bold all filenames, menu items, application names, or any text string that appears on-screen. this will facilitate readability tremendously, especially when following instructions.
- put "pre" or "tt" tags around all typed Terminal commands (or use something similar to the gentoo templates.)
- 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."
- 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.
- 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)
Notes about URLs in Templates
When including URLs to trinity (or similar pages with ? = & and other characters in them) in templates, 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 %2a %2c %3a %3b %3c %3e %5b %5d %5e %60 %7b %7c %7d %3f %3d
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.
