Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Anything and everything that's related to OGRE or the wider graphics field that doesn't fit into the other forums.
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New Wiki FTW?

Aye, we need a better tool
118
67%
Nay, I am perfectly happy with MediaWiki
28
16%
I don't care much either way
31
18%
 
Total votes: 177

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betajaen
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by betajaen »

jacmoe wrote:I'll see if I can apply it to the test installation without tainting it too much.
Our idea is to leave Tiki untouched as much as possible to easy upgrades.
Without coming across as a mad man hating anything with graphics in it and without causing much offence; Tabs are 2002, as well as anything blue/verdana/small-caps are design elements that make up a horrible period of BLOCKED.

Ogre3d.org has a great look as it is, I can't see why the new wiki can't be like that. It isn't that difficult to port the css over and all the images required - are already here.

You should focus on the showing content first, then anything else; related links, addons, links to other parts of the side should be put off to one-side (not literally). Everything else needs to be context sensitive; if your not logged in then you don't need to know the previous history of the page, or who edited it last, or what the source looks like - it clutters up the page, and any search engine bots will go through all that and will be part of the results in Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

Have a look at the Django and Pylons wiki, both of them incorporate the wiki into the overall design with the website really well. I believe if your user doesn't know he's gone to a forum post to a wiki page, without noticing any change - then you've done your job.

[Edit]

I downloaded the latest TikiWiki to have a look at. Are you sure that the Ogre3D.org server will be able to handle it?

I mean the latest MediaWiki source is 37.7MB and TikiWiki is 80.8mb.
MediaWiki has ~1,500 files (of that ~950 are php files), compared to TikiWiki's 8000 (~3000 are php). :shock:

Eek! For the sake of the server, I have to change my vote to a no.
Last edited by betajaen on Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

betajaen wrote:Without coming across as a mad man hating anything with graphics in it and With causing much offence; Tabs are 2002, as well as anything blue/verdana/small-caps are design elements that make up a horrible period of BLOCKED.
So, you're saying that jQuery is out?
That's not what I see when I browse what's hot these days.
There's actually no tabs on that layout I posted a screenshot of. Maybe they're tab-shaped, but you get a dropdown menu with quick-access links.
I think it's economical and not too busy.
betajaen wrote:Ogre3d.org has a great look as it is, I can't see why the new wiki can't be like that. It isn't that difficult to port the css over and all the images required - are already here.
I started by doing just that. Then I found out that the dark colours would drown out the content.
And I am not going to duplicate the look an feel of this bulletin board..
betajaen wrote:You should focus on the showing content first, then anything else; related links, addons, links to other parts of the side should be put off to one-side (not literally).
With all due respect: I've spent the last couple of weeks doing just that: all links works, the content is there.
The main bulk of the job is already done.
betajaen wrote:Everything else needs to be context sensitive; if your not logged in then you don't need to know the previous history of the page, or who edited it last, or what the source looks like - it clutters up the page, and any search engine bots will go through all that and will be part of the results in Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
That's fairly standard wiki setup.
And I think the makers of Tiki has put in bot-stoppers in the right places.
It's in the nature of the wiki-business to watch history and source, and why on Earth should we hide the contributers?
Most people browsing the wiki is not logged in, in contrast to the forum.
I think we have about 2,000 members of the current wiki. And maybe 20 active wiki editors, tops.
Out of over 20,000 forum members.
betajaen wrote:Have a look at the Django and Pylons wiki, both of them incorporate the wiki into the overall design with the website really well. I believe if your user doesn't know he's gone to a forum post to a wiki page, without noticing any change - then you've done your job.
A wiki page and a forum post is fundamentally different.
You can't just copy the layout and the looks over. It doesn't work that way IMO.
betajaen wrote:However; if you want me to, I could take a stab at it myself.
That would be appreciated.
Could be one option. :)

I am looking for a clean, efficient theme.
One that doesn't drown the content, but helps it stand out.
I am not looking for a Ogre3D.org clone. :wink:
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by betajaen »

I re-edited my post, whilst you was replying.

When I mentioned "you should focus on the content first", I didn't mean the actual text of the page. I mean the eye should be instantly focus to the first sentence of the page. Taking a random lexicon page for example, I don't know where the definition of "Depth Peeling" starts. The larger articles won't have this problem, but making the page longer with text isn't usually an option. ;)

Anyway; I've downloaded TikiWiki like in my previous post and I'll try and come up with the design I was referring to. I did try your wiki with Firebug for a few minutes and played around with making the link text green and some of the headings larger, it did make a difference.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

Now we're talking :)

You are the expert.

Do you want access to the online css editing facilities?
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

I mean, yes: the sidebar is too dominant. Would like something like the one in the screenshot I posted: just a hint of presence. Nothing more.
I really suck at stylesheets. :wink:
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

betajaen wrote:I downloaded the latest TikiWiki to have a look at. Are you sure that the Ogre3D.org server will be able to handle it?

I mean the latest MediaWiki source is 37.7MB and TikiWiki is 80.8mb.
MediaWiki has ~1,500 files (of that ~950 are php files), compared to TikiWiki's 8000 (~3000 are php). :shock:

Eek! For the sake of the server, I have to change my vote to a no.
What exactly are you referring to? :)

MediaWiki does absolutely nothing. It only serves pages real fast.
Tiki does a lot more than that.

And if Mozillas help site can use Tiki, why not puny Ogre Wiki?
(http://support.mozilla.com)

Keep in mind that we do not use more than half of the package anyway.
And the number of files is no indication of performance.

The benifit is that we don't need to play catch-up/patch-up with various plugins/modules each time we upgrade the software.
We probably would have if we were using any plugins with MW.
Here it's all in the package, you can use what you want: it's highly modular.
Performance is not going to be a problem.

MediaWiki, on the other hand, is built on a multi-server platform. And when running it from a single-server setup, most of the permance related code is stubbed out.
Which is why you get bad performance on medium sized MW installations.

Of course, since the software does a lot more than MW, the number of php files is bigger.
So what? :)

<edit>
betajaen wrote:MediaWiki has ~1,500 files (of that ~950 are php files), compared to TikiWiki's 8000 (~3000 are php). :shock:
Make sure that you are not counting PEAR, adodb and the Zend framework.
That should bring the number of files down considerably.
It's pretty much self-containable.
The only thing I had to do on my virgin server was to download geshi (due to it being GPL-licensed, it cannot be included).
Just so that we understand each other. :wink:

---
Zend framework : 2337 files.
PEAR : 348
adodb : 159
Smarty : 101
---

And, by the way: did you notice that most of the files are really small?
Because it's very modular.

One of the MediaWiki developers says that the MW code is really, really ugly. :)
He wrote a great deal of it himself, but he wouldn't recommend it to anyone, really..
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

For the convinience of any newcomers to this topic, I hereby repost the 3 screencasts:

Ogre Wiki Screencast part I

Ogre Wiki Screencast part II

Ogre Wiki Screencast part III
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by spacegaier »

betajaen definetly got a point with this Depth Peeling article. You don't get the idea with the first look. There is too much (unnecessary?) stuff around. But I am sure that you two will come up with a clean and nice design :) .
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by spacegaier »

@jacmoe: Just realized that you (testwise) started to translate parts of the start page. I am definetly against making the wiki multi-lingual. Multiple languages would mean that there are parts of the wiki not everyone can read and therefore won't be kept up to date that easily, as you need someone able to write in this language. This probably would have bad results...

Also: Did you port over the user rights from the old wiki? Because I can delete pages (at least the icon is there, haven't acutally tried it yet). That shouldn't be an option for the "normal " user.

EDIT: Seems like I am listed in the admins list.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

There really isn't much unnessecary stuff when you browse in fullscreen wiki read mode.

I removed some stuff from the sidebar, but now it's seriously out of style :P

I think I'll swap menus..
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

spacegaier wrote:@jacmoe: Just realized that you (testwise) started to translate parts of the start page. I am definetly against making the wiki multi-lingual. Multiple languages would mean that there are parts of the wiki not everyone can read and therefore won't be kept up to date that easily, as you need someone able to write in this language. This probably would have bad results...
I am definitely *for* this - it would mean that a lot more people would participate in improving the wiki. And we would be able to gather communities, instead of scattering them.
I'd love to see Russian, Spanish, German and Chinese (even Welsh!) pages.

The official language remains English. So it's not a problem.
It's an asset. :wink:

<edit> But I do intend to limit the list of available languages. Maybe Russian, Spanish, German, Chinese, Dutch and Portuguese, Japanese and Italian would be enough? (for now ? :P)
spacegaier wrote:Also: Did you port over the user rights from the old wiki? Because I can delete pages (at least the icon is there, haven't acutally tried it yet). That shouldn't be an option for the "normal " user.
Yes, you are definitely not a "normal" user. :wink:

And, please don't try deleting anything just yet. :lol:
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by spacegaier »

Perhaps it could enhance the first look understanding of the pages, if the footer (Contributor and last changes part) would be visually separated from the actual page content. Either with some kind of horizontal line or a background color such as the header (with the breadcrumb navigation).
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

A good idea. :)

What do you think of the moved menus?

Ideally, I'd like to have those wiki menus placed topmost, but it sort of wreaks havok on the layout.
Don't look at the styling, it's awful.
The sidebar is less busy now.
I'd like it to be lighter and less dominant.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

If only we could squeeze the tagcloud in to the topbar, along with the categorize and freetag tagger - then we could get rid of the sidebar altogether.
But let's keep in mind that the wiki *has* full screen reading mode and fullscreen editing modes.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by spacegaier »

I wouldn't get rid of the sidebar. Without it, the site content would be too wide. I also really liked to have the "Last changes" right there, to be able to quickly monitor the most recent changes.

Question: Am I right that there are now Tags and Categories? Where is the difference?
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

Tags are used much categories in MW.
It's more dynamic and a lot faster to tag pages.

Categories are used with great care, because you are able to tie permissions to categories.
They are administrative.
Tutorials structure uses the Tutorials category, and so on. And then there's 'done', 'whatisit', etc.

Tags are much better for finding things. And with neither categories nor tags do we need to edit the page, or create a separate category page.

I think it's exciting watching the tag cloud change. :)

So: normal wiki users are not allowed to use categories. It's administrative.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

What's cool is that you can search and filter by as many tags as you like. So you can get pretty accurate results from using them.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by spacegaier »

Okay, I think I understand.

What I said above concerning the Contributor/last changes visual separation, also applies to the category link an the bottom of a page. Perhaps we, should make a box around it or something similar.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

The old category links are not needed anymore, actually. :wink:
They can be safely removed.
I kept all the old category pages in the category category.

I think they could become a good Ogre Lexicon. Beauty has done a huge amount of work there.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

If you need to see the categories - which you normally don't - you just enter edit on a page and go to the Categories tab.
Freetags are on 'Properties', along with the page description and the footnotes.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by spacegaier »

jacmoe wrote:I think they could become a good Ogre Lexicon. Beauty has done a huge amount of work there.
He? I am not getting the point.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

No, me neither. :P
I am thinking about this:
Category OgreLexicon
Sorry for the confusion. :)
Most of the old category pages can be removed.
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

If anyone else wants to have early access, send me a PM.
I'll then create an account and generate a password. Upon logging in you'll be asked to change it. Be sure to change it to your Ogre forum password.
We'll hook it up against the Ogre forum user database later, if we decide to go for it. :wink:
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

In case you're wondering, freetags are collaborative tagging, a.k.a. Folksonomy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy - they are called freetags because of the underlying library: freetag.
http://code.google.com/p/freetag/
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Re: Proposal: New Ogre Wiki

Post by jacmoe »

Nice change you made to 'Getting Started', Spacegaier - you're a fast learner! :)

I am anxious to hear what you think. :wink:

I'll write a guidelines page very soon, tomorrow.
But what I'm doing now is moving pages into structures, as soon as I figure out where they go.
Some of the pages are renamed, and then they need an alias for the old name.
The toc is made toggle-able to save some space (the new super maketoc tag).
A description is added, so that the structure toc can list it intelligently, with link and description.
And so on.
Luckily, the content is all there. We just need to bring it out in the light. :wink:
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