Help:Editing

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Contents 1 Information on Editing and Wiki Syntax 2 Stylistic and Editorial Policies for the NeoWiki 2.1 Style and Formatting Guide 2.1.1 Mac vs. Windows/Unix/Linux Conventions 2.2 Notes about URLs in Templates 2.3 Available Templates 2.3.1 Wiki Translation Templates 3 Sandbox 4 Style Guide Discussion

Information on Editing and Wiki Syntax

• From the MediaWiki site

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Reference_card

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.

• Do not choose page titles which end with scp or ftp or other well-known internet protocols, or common extensions for executable files (exe); the server will not display those pages.
• Always add a comment (summary) of your change.
• When adding a new page, be sure to include the appropriate Category tag(s) on the page.
• For discussion or questions, post on the Talk (discussion) page for the article or editor in question (for discussion around a specific edit), or start a new thread in the NeoWiki forum at trinity.
• Rebranding: consult the Rebranding page for the latest info about rebranding NeoOffice/J as NeoOffice in the wiki
• When linking to a page at www.neooffice.org, English pages must use language-agnostic urls, e.g. http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/download.php instead of http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/download.php

  Doing so allows redirecting to a user's preferred language if it exists on www.neooffice.org.

  • When linking to a section on a page (an anchor), e.g. http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/download.php#installlanguages, use the following format instead to work-around a Safari bug: http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/download.php?fragment=installlanguages

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/Unix/Linux Conventions

Since the goal of NeoOffice is making OpenOffice.org 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

• Template:Fixme, Template:Fr:Fixme, Template:de:Fixme, Template:it:Fixme, Template:es:Fixme - adds a note to a page needing updates and adds the page to the "Fixme" category
• Template:InTranslation - adds a note to the top of the page indication the article is being translated and the full text can be found in one or more other languages
• Template:LastUpdated - adds a "Last Updated:" note at the top of a page (for semi-stable pages that do sometimes get substantive updates, like the NeoOffice 2.1 Press Kit or NeoOffice Feature Comparison) with the date of the last substantive change.

Formatting templates

• Template:Bluebox - used on Main Page and in the NeoOffice 2.1 Press Kit
• Template:Alertbox - used for critical alerts
• Template:redbox - used for important notices (non-critical)

  E.g. references to the Trademark Usage Policy on the Build Instructions page and the translations of the Trademark Usage page

• Template:Yellowcolumn - actually pink, used on new Main Page
• Template:Dashedbox
• Template:preBox - used to wrangle multi-line pre-formatted text into lists, such as here
• Template:Handbook sidebar
• Template:Imagebox
• Template:ImageboxRight
• Template:Window - this is "under development" and a first stab at fleshing out the undifferentiated features of the style guide (window title vs. tab/pane title vs. option/setting title, etc.)
• Template:BlueRow - for table alternate row bgcolor
• Template:HeaderRow - for table header bgcolor
• Template:Y - Yes
• Template:N - No
• Template:W - Warning
• Template:Clickpic - Clickable image (used in "Aqua is Here")

Content Templates

• Template:Editor toc
• Template:HistoryTOC - for the NeoHistory article; uses the Handbook sidebar formatting template
• Template:DatabaseTOC - for the database config and use set of articles; uses the Handbook sidebar formatting template
• Template:x11news
• Template:NeoOfficeWords - for the new Main Page
• Template:NeoLightWords - for the new Main Page
• Template:OOoWords - for the new Main Page
• Template:MainPageNewsEN -- content templates for the bluebox in in the Welcome section of the Main Page
• Template:Fr:MainPageNews
• Template:MainPageTerryEN, Template:Fr:MainPageTerry, Template:De:MainPageTerry - Terry Teague memorial
• template:x11sidebar - menu for the side of X11 pages
• Template:NeoPatchVer - neo patch version
• Template:NeoEAPPatchVer - EAP patch version
• , Template:EAPend, Template:EAPstart - for any EAP date or version references
• Template:oooversion - OOo version

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

• Template:OtherLangs, Template:fr:OtherLangs, Template:de:OtherLangs, Template:it:OtherLangs, Template:es:OtherLangs

Formatting

• Template:Toplangbar
• Template:BotlangbarEN, Template:BotlangbarFR

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

For details about how we arrived at these rules and other discussion of the Style Guide, see Style Guide Discussion on this article's Discussion page.