User talk:Tony.Griffith

Procedure for Adding Content

(This is a work in progress)..

Quick Reference

All this stuff is case sensitive, OK?

A plain Link to a Page within the Wiki looks like:

[[PageTitle]]

To refer to the page but display alternative text:

[[PageTitle|AlternateText]]

A plain Link to a Section within Page within the Wiki looks like:

[[PageTitle#SectionHeading]]

To refer to the page, but display alternat text:

[[PageTitle#SectionHeading|AlternateText]]

To include some content from a "Template" page:

<onlyinclude> Text contents etc </onlyinclude>

Tips

• I prefer to use the FCK editor to do headings, or image links but its copy/paste sucks
  (use drag drop if you have to, or Ctrl+Drag-Drop to copy stuff around).

• From FCK I toggle over to the Plain Wikitext Editor interface to do major text re-alignment that require coopy/paste etc - it is so much easier.
• In general, I find it useful to go to the full screen editing, as you can see more text and this makes copy paste easier in FCK.
• Note also that with the FCK editor, any text within the onlyinclude tags is hidden. What you see is a "Special Tag" icon. You need to right click and select "Special Tag Properties" option, before you can edit the text. Alternately, you can see and edit all this text if you shift to the Wikitext display view.
  
• FCK does not do indenting, you need to go to Wikitext before you can apply the colon and semicolon markups.

General Procedural Rules

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DON'T edit the MAIN PAGE (of the Planimate Wiki)

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To edit a section of a page, click on the Edit link to the right of the Section Heading. 

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To edit an entire page, click on the Edit link at the bottom of the page (in the grey bar).

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DON'T turn section headings into links.

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There are a number of approaches you can take to contributing to or editing the Wiki:

Sometimes you want to hold some text in a separate article page, but 'include' some of that text in one or more other articles.

Each of the approaches described here can make use of the Breakout Template (see below)

Dump, then Spread

• Make a new page that contains all the overall text and the details, separated by headings.

• Then break out individual Sections into pages of their own, leaving a reference in the original page.

Expand, then Break Out

• Edit an existing page, adding new material.
• If you think the page is now too long, and your text can be broken away into its own page.
  If you use the breakout template, you can leave some of your text with the original article you edited.

Create, then Connect In

• Create a new page containing new information.
• If you want some text from this page to appear in another, use the Breakout Template, (otherwise just create a link to the page).

Feel free to add more approach contexts, and suggest other templates.

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The Breakout Template

This template is for when you want to move an amount of text from a page into its own article, with its own heading.

With this template you can arrange for some (or all) of the text of this new article to remain in the original article.

You can also use this template to do the opposite, i.e. "Include" some text from one article page into another article page, along with a reference to the source article page.

Breaking Out Sections into Separate Articles

(Applies to Dump then Spread, or Expand then Break Out)

Make a new Page and paste or write in all the text you want into it.

Split the page into Sections using section headings.

Edit the Section you want to break out, by clicking the Edit link at its section heading.

Go straight to WikiText  (because stoopid FCK doesn't know how to copy text etc)

Decide which text from this section should be included as a little intro to lead into the article page you are about to create, and position the

 <onlyinclude> and </onlyinclude>

tags above and below it.

Now select ALL the text, and copy to the clipboard (for use in the new page).

Select all text below the Section Heading, then below the Section heading type:

 {{Breakout|SectionHeadingName}}   (or you can use any name you like in fact.)

This uses the template called Breakout, which will provide the link to the article name you entered and include article text between the onlyinclude tags.

Preview the page.

You should now see below the section heading a piece of text brought in from the article you referred to, and below that, saying:

For full details refer to this page: followed by a link to the article page you typed in.

Next, click on this link, create the page then go straight to wikitext from FCK and paste in the text from your clipboard.

Set any categories you want to apply, save the page and return to the original page to check if it all works, and that the included text is suitable.

Assembling a High Level Overview Page

(Applies to Create, then Connect In)

You can use the Breakout Template (described above) to either:

1. Assemble high-level overview article pages from a number of separate page articles (existing or otherwise).
   
2. "Include" into an existing article, a little text from a separate page along with a link reference to that separate page
   

Here's how:

• Make a list of the Separate Pages you want to bring together in this overview.
  
• Create the ArticlePage you wish to become a collection of high level overviews.
  
• Add a Section Heading
  
• Below the Section heading type:

 {{Breakout|Name of Article you want to link to}}

This uses the template called Breakout, which will provide the link to the article name you entered 'and include either the entire article text, or the text between onlyinclude tags.

Preview the page.

You should now see below the section heading a piece of text brought in from the article you referred to, and below that, saying:

For full details refer to this page: followed by a link to the article page you typed in.

(If you want to add a link to a page you are yet to create, you can type anything you like instead of the existing article title.)

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JustInclude Template : Include Text from another Page

Sometimes you come across the following situation:

You have a page whose entire content could usefully be placed in a number of locations.

(Thus a link indicating more detail here... is not required)

You have a fairly short page, into which you would like to add some additional content, from one of these short multi-purpose pages.

(No need to link to the page, since its entire content is to be included).

For this, I have adapted the Breakout Template to become a "JustInclude" Template.

Use this Template when you want to include an entire page in your short page :

 {{JustInclude|Name of Article you want to link to}}

How to specify a dynamically built list of articles

These can be from same category (or other categories) and make specific exclusions, inclusions etc.

Rather than one by one, you may wish to add a listing of Articles to your overview page in another way:

e.g.

<DPL>
 
category=Item 

notnamespace=Category 

notcategory=FAQ 

ordermethod=pagetouched 

order=descending 

 
</DPL> 

Craig has put together a good example of how to make use of this capability in the Entry Object.

At the bottom of the page, he lists out all the articles that are tagged with the Category the Entry is in.

Note that he carefully excludes articles from the FAQ category in this listing.

Then he separately displays all the FAQ articles whose titles contain the word 'Entry', or 'entry'.

This is all done using this list-making feature, as follows:

== Entry Articles  ==

<dpl>
category=Object/Entry
notnamespace=Category
notcategory=FAQ
ordermethod=pagetouched
order=descending
</dpl> 

<br> 

== Object Frequently Asked Questions  ==

<dpl>
category=FAQ
titlematch=%Entry%|%entry%
ordermethod=pagetouched
order=descending
</dpl> 

Uploading Images - Pointers and Hints

The FCK editor is the better option for linking to an image, because it enables you to type in a hint for the image name, then provides you with a set of matches to choose from, then shows you the image so you can ensure it is the one you want to use.

Before you can choose an image though, you need to upload it..

The Upload File option at the bottom of a page is where you upload a file.

Before you upload the file, you have to have made it and saved it on you own PC.

To make best use of the hint capability mentioned in the FCK editor, when you name your image, separate words with spaces or underscores. DON'T use a name without spaces, as this will reduce the support that the FCK hint-search feature can give you.

Fun with Tables

My suggestion would be to build a basic table with FCK, then go into Wikitext view to make further formatting changes..

This is a sample Table built with FCK

T1	C2	C3
R2	C5	C6
R3	C8	C9

In the FCK Table Setup window, I selected:

• cell spacing to be zero,
• to have the columns be a "header", (this made the first column bold).
  

If you want to mess with the formatting some more, go to Wikitext :

You format a cell by inserting the formatting code in front of the cell text, making sure the text remains in the same line (i.e. don't use line/para breaks.

I modified the table below by inserting the formatting code for Cell C2 as follows:

Original was: 
| C2

After formatting: 

| style="font-weight: bold; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 204);" | C2

Note the additional pipe character separator

Now it shows thus:

This is a sample Table built with FCK

T1	C2	C3
R2	C5	C6
R3	C8	C9

Go to www.w3schools.com/CSS/css_text.asp for more info about CSS formatting code.

Go to www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Tables for more explanation of the Wiki Table code tags etc.

Notes recorded during updating and new content addition

To 'Move', or not to 'Move' a page..

There is going to be a lot of changing around of article titles to reflect the alterations of either object names, or language we use (e.g. "Agents" to become "Carrier Items").

Whilst it seems like an easy option to "move" a page - which enables you to change the article title, I have found that the redirection that gets set up by this can be confusing to a user..

Problem is that the name of the redirecting article is displayed in the top of the new page.

If that title contains obsoleted language or terminology, then it will be confusing.

My thought at this stage is to actually create a new page entirely, with the correct title and text etc, then go to the previous page, and find what links to it, and change those links to point to the new page.

Once done, the older page can be removed from all categories and added into Obsolete.

Miscellaneous Ideas

1. Have an INI option for setting a default Server Limit on the MultiServer

Suggestions to simplify working with Track Networks

1. Set up the Track _ModelObject column options to enable renaming of the Track's object label.
   The only Track Section identification name that the modeller or user works with is this one.
2. Change the Menu Option "Section Colours" to "Track Colours"