discuss: Thread: small demo page

I setup a very small demo page.

this page is accessible from the main page, but you can go 
directly to:

http://dodin.org/mediawiki/index.php/Tldp_demo_page

it's on my own personal server at home, on a dsl line, not 
too fast, not always up :-(.

you can test the page as anonymous, login with your name 
(create an account), or login as the "author", "Tldp" 
(capital first letter), passwd "tldp" (no capitals) as sysop.

I could not use direct html (did no good on the wiki page), 
only the text one, On the other wiki seen here that was not 
the case, they may be a solution I don't know.

I setup a locked page and an unlocked one.

I used my own HOWTO for an example.

e,joy, modify as you can. beware, as sysop, you can access 
all the pages, even not tldp ones (not so interesting and 
only in french :-()

jdd

-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

sorry to be late on this. we at ibilbio run a few instances of mediawiki 
and we love it. there are problems with defacements both from bad people 
and from bots. a favorite is to create a new page full of links to warez 
and porn then to remove the reference from the previous pages or even to 
remove the refering pages. then you have a 'secret' page to which lusers 
can go to directly but the managers of the site, if they are lax, will 
rarely find.
that said restricting and/or approving logins helps.
all you need to do is ask for the mysql set up required and to set up an 
instance of mediawiki. we do not do that centrally.
but you/we must be responsible for policing the wiki.



On Fri, 19 Aug 2005, jdd wrote:

+I setup a very small demo page.
+
+this page is accessible from the main page, but you can go directly to:
+
+http://dodin.org/mediawiki/index.php/Tldp_demo_page
+
+it's on my own personal server at home, on a dsl line, not too fast, not always
+up :-(.
+
+you can test the page as anonymous, login with your name (create an account),
+or login as the "author", "Tldp" (capital first letter), passwd "tldp" (no
+capitals) as sysop.
+
+I could not use direct html (did no good on the wiki page), only the text one,
+On the other wiki seen here that was not the case, they may be a solution I
+don't know.
+
+I setup a locked page and an unlocked one.
+
+I used my own HOWTO for an example.
+
+e,joy, modify as you can. beware, as sysop, you can access all the pages, even
+not tldp ones (not so interesting and only in french :-()
+
+jdd
+
+

==========================================================================
                             Paul Jones
 "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation." Alasdair Gray
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> http://dodin.org/mediawiki/index.php/Tldp_demo_page
> I setup a locked page and an unlocked one.
> 
> I used my own HOWTO for an example.

The setup with stable and editable HOWTO seems good. Since your howto is 
a simple one, it's pretty easy to edit. But, consider the bigger HOWTOs 
with code and even images. For example, I generate the code in my 
NCURSES HOWTO from the real c programs stored seprately. I don't want 
anyone directly editing the code in the HOWTO. It's also possible for 
someone to throw in some bad code (either style-wise or real malicious) 
in the howto and it will be tough to check as I have more than 30 little 
programs. Also, I have references to snippets of code, that are not 
directly in the HOWTO.

In concept, having a Wiki sounds nice. But, until we get a good editing 
mechanism, having a comment mechanism like postgresql documentation 
(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/interactive/index.html) that allows 
comments for each individual page is probably a better option.

Different howtos have different requirements. My HOWTO is more like a 
guide, and is not going to change much. However, I want to correct small 
errors in programs etc. I can do that simply by collecting all the 
reader's comments (that's how I do it now). Some other howtos are 
describing howto do a single thing, and may require constant update as 
Linux changes.

My 2c.

-- 
Pradeep Padala
http://ppadala.blogspot.com

Pradeep Padala wrote:

> with code and even images.

i that case, the answer is probably even simpler: gives only 
a like on the wiki locked page to the hole HOWTO and ask for 
comments on the talk page.

> comments for each individual page is probably a better option.

each wiki page has it's own talk page

> errors in programs etc. I can do that simply by collecting all the 
> reader's comments (that's how I do it now).

I do the same, but users comment come in various ways and I 
tend to loose them :-(

the wiki david quoted seemed have a solution to get the 
howto online (but right now it's out of order, I can't verufy)

jdd


-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

>> with code and even images.
> 
> i that case, the answer is probably even simpler: gives only a like on 
> the wiki locked page to the hole HOWTO and ask for comments on the talk 
> page.

Yep, that's what I had in my mind. Something like that for howto that 
are kind of like guides.

>> comments for each individual page is probably a better option.
>  
> each wiki page has it's own talk page

Right, but how are we going to publish the howtos? Just as a single HTML 
or multiple pages with comments on each page? If this is allowed, are we 
going to throw away SGML? If we do, what about PDF, PS ... generation?

-- 
Pradeep Padala
http://ppadala.blogspot.com

Pradeep Padala wrote:

> Right, but how are we going to publish the howtos? Just as a single HTML 
> or multiple pages with comments on each page? If this is allowed, are we 
> going to throw away SGML? If we do, what about PDF, PS ... generation?

editing the HOWTO directly would be good if we had a backend 
mediawiki<->docbook, what we have not.

the wiki can only be an additional entry, not a panacea.

media wiki have a small but still better than text (:-) 
image include capability.

but the real question is: do the tldp need a new way to 
communicate between users and authors. I think personnaly 
that there is a great lack of comms here, but I know also, 
there is much documentation out of the ldp, now, and often 
more up to date. tldp may be silently dying...

jdd


-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

> but the real question is: do the tldp need a new way to communicate 
> between users and authors. I think personnaly that there is a great lack 
> of comms here, but I know also, there is much documentation out of the 
> ldp, now, and often more up to date. tldp may be silently dying...

You hit the nail right on the head. I personally would like to see tldp 
improve, pursue outside authors to submit documents, better review 
process and quicker updates. I think for most of the newbies tldp is 
still the first stop (That's how I started learning Linux in the dark ages).

I can start the process of contacting outside authors and request them 
to submit their documents, and help them convert their html to docbook 
etc. Do you think this would be helpful?

Can somebody update the link about my html2db on 
http://www.tldp.org/authors/index.html#resources. Please change it from 
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~ppadala/tidy/ to 
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~ppadala/projects/tidy/

-- 
Pradeep Padala
http://ppadala.blogspot.com

jdd wrote:

> Pradeep Padala wrote:
> 
>> Right, but how are we going to publish the howtos? Just as a single 
>> HTML or multiple pages with comments on each page? If this is allowed, 
>> are we going to throw away SGML? If we do, what about PDF, PS ... 
>> generation?


Supporting multiple formats is important. HTML and plain text
seems trivial, not sure about PS and PDF.

> editing the HOWTO directly would be good if we had a backend 
> mediawiki<->docbook, what we have not.


Conversion will likely incur a lot of lossage, moreso for
conversion to DocCook than LinuxDoc. Even so also LinuxDoc
conversion will have lossage like indexing tags.

> the wiki can only be an additional entry, not a panacea.


No matter the form or format of entry, a source for multiple
output formats were always a goal. Invisible markup will be a
problem, especially for those that believe in the semantic web.

> media wiki have a small but still better than text (:-) image include 
> capability.


I feel illustrations should be used sparsingly in dcuments that
after all should work well in plain ascii.

> but the real question is: do the tldp need a new way to communicate 
> between users and authors. I think personnaly that there is a great lack 
> of comms here, but I know also, there is much documentation out of the 
> ldp, now, and often more up to date. tldp may be silently dying...

Rapid user feedback is what makes this approach interesting to me.

Regards,
    Stein Gjoen

Pradeep Padala wrote:

> Can somebody update the link about my html2db on 

I forgot that one.

wiki text is very similar to html. it accepts many html tags 
(tables, pre, p, br). So it should be pretty trivial to 
chage htmltodb for mediawikitodb, still needing layout 
instructions to set the text correctly formatted.

anyway, any wiki engine produces html for the browser, this 
is another way of choice.

if ever we choose to go in such a direction, probably the 
mediawiki tech list will be interested (I'm subscribed).

But before going further, we need to know if the tldp will 
accept this. probably need some patience (waiting for 
septembre and the others members)

jdd

-- 
pour m'écrire, aller sur:
http://www.dodin.net
http://valerie.dodin.net
http://arvamip.free.fr

> but the real question is: do the tldp need a new way to
> communicate between users and authors. I think personnaly
> that there is a great lack of comms here, but I know also,
> there is much documentation out of the ldp, now, and often
> more up to date. tldp may be silently dying...

i personally think TLDP as it currently exist should now retire. Most
of the HOWTOs (including mine) are not needed anymore, since the linux
distros and other opensource apps have started producing excellent
documentation. Check out the documentation produced by RedHat. It is
excellent. Same goes for Apache.

TLDP should now change their business philosophy. I would like to see
a searchable (google-able) database of the documentations produced by
OpenSource/Linux vendors. The readers should be able to add comments
and provide feedback and sample code to each topic, much like what
mySQL does.

Any thoughts?

-- 
In Peace,
Saqib Ali
http://www.xml-dev.com/blog/
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better.