Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2004 1:48 pm Post subject: Wiki Thoughts
So thoughts on the Wiki
Actually this is from a previous post of mine:
Quote:
On the front page just have the three listed, and make a new front page for each program. this way the neo.org page and the neo.org/j pages can link directly to their portions.
And then the front page would be dedicated to only things that affect all three togther.
This way we can make the Neo/J look more like a user/how to section, where the Neo would be a coder/tester section, and the X11... well, who knows what that will look like =)
Which is what I have been working on slowly.
Also, I think that we should work towards using the wiki as much as possible, rather than static pages, this will help keep things current as we can all contribute to the page, rather than just a few of us.
Also, as Smokey meantioned, the more of those nifty things we can put into the wiki, the better, like language help tips, or menu bar changes, launch icons, all those things we've done that will get lost in the forums.
So, see something you think should be saved? just start a page, and paste the forum posts, we can always go through and edit later.
I'll be posting info on the wiki at the bottom of the main page as well. Only thing i request is that if you are a poster that you go into preferences and put in your forum username.
First off, a big thanks to Jake for hosting the wiki.
Second, I posted my rough draft of the history, etc., tonight. See the post for my post-posting thoughts, and everyone have at fixing things.
Third, is there a wikipage that explains the different formatting commands? the NeoWiki uses different syntax than the wiki I'm familiar with, and while looking at some other entries I could deduce some of the syntax, there were things I couldn't figure out and I couldn't find a syntax page...
Finally, I think we need to do a little clean-up/re-arranging, mostly of the NeoJ section. There are pages/links on the NeoOffice/J page itself that isn't (or wasn't, until I did a little hack) listed in the Neo/J section of the main NeoWiki page (in fact, the NeoOffice/J page is not accessible from the NeoWiki main page at all). Some of the things in the FAQ should perhaps go in the forthcoming Release Notes section, as maybe should the tips and aids. There's stuff out of sync (I added stuff about Aqaufication to several pages; some of this we might want to consolidate on the NeoOffice/J page?) and so forth. IMO.
All as we start getting more content up there, of course.
My guess is the lack of well-linkedness is a problem for the OOo and Neo sections/pages as well, but I didn't really explore.
Ok, just some random thoughts. And it's late and I'm tired. So maybe nothing makes sense.
(in fact, the NeoOffice/J page is not accessible from the NeoWiki main page at all)
eh, it is, but you are right, it isn't easy to see. I'll turn the main header into a link.
there is a link at the bottom called WikiInfo which will be the place to put stuff about the wiki. I put a link there to the Wiki's homepage. we can make up some quick 'how do i?'s for that part too, if that would help.
I think there is enough X11 Neo/j crossover that we'll get X11 content, and of course there are still quite a few X11 users out there. The Neo part will probably just turn into a ghost town for the Neo developers for a while, but better to save the info...
Joined: Sep 18, 2003 Posts: 434 Location: London, UK
Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 5:47 am Post subject:
No time to go into any depth with a critique of the history/differences etc, but a couple of points and suggestions for additions:
1. OpenOffice is trademarked (for what I don't know) so remember to use OpenOffice.org exclusively - perhaps have an explanation as to why it is OOo and not OO. I've corrected a few of the instances of this error I spotted.
2. A brief section emphasising the high importance of OOo/X11 to the Neo projects would be a wise addition.
3. Perhaps some explanation of the differences in the licensing scheme for OOo (whatever it is, but it isn't GPL) cf. Neo (GPL) and why that difference exists and its impact on the sharing of code, the lack of use of OOo servers etc for Neo/J? Not to emphasise any rancour, but to explain why the two seem so separate?
4. Non-vital, but I'd like to see a visual timeline of some description (I don't know how to implement such a thing... Flash??) that would allow a visitor to see when the various milestones were reached and by whom.
Edit:
5. I think Terry Teague ought to get a mention somewhere for his efforts to simplify the OOo/X11 launch process. _________________ PBG4, 1.5GHz, SuperDrive, 1GB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 5400rpm 80GB HD, MacOS X 10.4.5
Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 9:52 am Post subject: Links in the Wiki page
Jake, could you fix the links on the wiki pages? It seems that a lot of them are either dead or not valid anymore. On the left, there is: Downloads, Contacts, Mailing Lists, Start OpenOffice.org. On the right, there is, under NeoOffice: FAQ, Download, Source Code; under NeoOffice/J: FAQ, Download, Features, Build. It doesn't seem to be possible for us to fix those links. Thanks!
1. OpenOffice is trademarked (for what I don't know) so remember to use OpenOffice.org exclusively - perhaps have an explanation as to why it is OOo and not OO. I've corrected a few of the instances of this error I spotted.
It's hard because the wiki seems to stop at a period when making wikiWords, but strangely there does seem to be a OpenOffice.org page that (at least as of last night) was a "mirror" of the OpenOffice page. Can the OpenOffice page be deleted?
JKT wrote:
2. A brief section emphasising the high importance of OOo/X11 to the Neo projects would be a wise addition.
Yep, for the to-do list.
JKT wrote:
3. Perhaps some explanation of the differences in the licensing scheme for OOo (whatever it is, but it isn't GPL) cf. Neo (GPL) and why that difference exists and its impact on the sharing of code, the lack of use of OOo servers etc for Neo/J? Not to emphasise any rancour, but to explain why the two seem so separate?
I'd really like a consise and cogent explanation of this myself...I mean I have a basic grasp on things, but not well enough that I could explain it to others. Ideally this becomes another section of the history/overview page.
I'm thinking right now that we actually split the history/overview page up, that we have a TOC on each page, but put the intro, history of OOo/OOoMac, NeoOffice, Neo/J, Licensing, and Links each on their own page?
In this style (where --- are the links to the other sections)
Intro
---
---
---
---
OOo/OOoMac
---
---
so you always know where you are in the article?
JKT wrote:
4. Non-vital, but I'd like to see a visual timeline of some description (I don't know how to implement such a thing... Flash??) that would allow a visitor to see when the various milestones were reached and by whom.
Even just a static PNG would be nice...we'd need to come up with a list of dates/milestones. Neo/J's are fairly well doco'd on its home page, OOo and the Mac port shouldn't be too hard to find, but early Neo dates (esp. the founding, which is still "????" in the history article!) are hard to come by.
JKT wrote:
Edit:
5. I think Terry Teague ought to get a mention somewhere for his efforts to simplify the OOo/X11 launch process.
OM, I forgot Terry! I'm so in awe of his AppleScripting abilities, I can't believe I forgot him (well, since I was so tired when I was writing that, I can, but you know...)
This I've already rectified!
Lots of good activity on the wiki today!
After we get the history/overview article in a bit better shape, I think it'll be time to ask Ed and Patrick to link to it from the Neo and Neo/J pages, right?
3. Perhaps some explanation of the differences in the licensing scheme for OOo (whatever it is, but it isn't GPL) cf. Neo (GPL) and why that difference exists and its impact on the sharing of code, the lack of use of OOo servers etc for Neo/J? Not to emphasise any rancour, but to explain why the two seem so separate?
I'd really like a consise and cogent explanation of this myself...I mean I have a basic grasp on things, but not well enough that I could explain it to others. Ideally this becomes another section of the history/overview page
Joined: Sep 18, 2003 Posts: 434 Location: London, UK
Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2004 2:29 am Post subject:
sardisson wrote:
I'm thinking right now that we actually split the history/overview page up, that we have a TOC on each page, but put the intro, history of OOo/OOoMac, NeoOffice, Neo/J, Licensing, and Links each on their own page?
In this style (where --- are the links to the other sections)
Intro
---
---
---
---
OOo/OOoMac
---
---
so you always know where you are in the article?
You mean in a style similar to that of a John Siracusa Ars Technica article? That would be a good way to lay it all out IMO. Perhaps we could persuade him to write it for us too _________________ PBG4, 1.5GHz, SuperDrive, 1GB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 5400rpm 80GB HD, MacOS X 10.4.5
Joined: Sep 18, 2003 Posts: 434 Location: London, UK
Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2004 6:11 am Post subject:
You know what would also be nice, would be to include some screenshots of e.g. the flaming yeti builds etc. as an indication of how far things did get before they were abandoned for NO/J. It would be necessary to emphasise that, while those builds were much more "aqua" than NO/J, they were essentially unusable. It might also be worth adding the fact that Dan and/or Ed(?) talked about developing NO at one of the WWDC (IIRC) - didn't they win some award for it as well, or am I completely misremembering? _________________ PBG4, 1.5GHz, SuperDrive, 1GB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 5400rpm 80GB HD, MacOS X 10.4.5
The links on the left bar mostly seem to be broken (pages.php not found), and the StartOpenOffice.org link is also gone
The Start OOo link on the left has an extra trailing / after the .html. On the other hand, Terry always seems to be over his bandwidth; when I added his link to the History article, it was over quota then, too.
ovvldc wrote:
Also, not turning every OpenOffice.org or NeoOffice/J mention into a link might improve text clarity
I tried to catch some of that, but you actually have to do work to make them *not* links And I felt that in some cases the links actually made the page more readible by breaking up the long black sections We should re-evaluate that once we break the page up into parts, though.
JKT wrote:
You know what would also be nice, would be to include some screenshots of e.g. the flaming yeti builds etc. as an indication of how far things did get before they were abandoned for NO/J. It would be necessary to emphasise that, while those builds were much more "aqua" than NO/J, they were essentially unusable.
Ed's got the screenshots (or pages containing them) linked from www.neooffice.org, so that's an easy task.
JKT wrote:
It might also be worth adding the fact that Dan and/or Ed(?) talked about developing NO at one of the WWDC (IIRC) - didn't they win some award for it as well, or am I completely misremembering?
Wow, didn't know that. We really need a NO person to flush out that section. Besides Ed, are any of the others "still around"?
yes yes, links are broken. the new template will fix that. the reason they are broken is because they don't go to the main site, they go to my mirror, which is still on 0.8.2 if i remember right, so i don't want to fix that part. =)
sigh, one of these days, nifty perl program, auto mirror, jacob sleeping while greatness happening...
i put something in the wikiInfo about the never ending page. if anyone else has formatting suggestions, go for it, just because it is a wiki, doesn't mean it can't look proffesional.
Also, not turning every OpenOffice.org or NeoOffice/J mention into a link might improve text clarity
I tried to catch some of that, but you actually have to do work to make them *not* links And I felt that in some cases the links actually made the page more readible by breaking up the long black sections We should re-evaluate that once we break the page up into parts, though.
When I was in college, my teachers told me to use white space instead .
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I'm so in awe of his AppleScripting abilities, I can't believe I forgot him (well, since I was so tired when I was writing that, I can, but you know...)
.