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[glynor]

I think that's missing something between "still" and "all".

Fixed.

[glynor]

I added to and further updated the Imports page, listed above.  This includes a new page for Auto-Import, which I've only just started:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Auto-Import

I was working on that and got a bit side-tracked, though, and also worked on:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/View_Modes
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Standard_View
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Action_Window

And a few other sections.

[glynor]

Nathan, I took a crack at cleaning up the Blu-Ray page last night:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Blu-ray

Can you take a look and make sure I didn't make it full of lies?

Thanks.

[InflatableMouse]

Glynor,

Can you have a look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Nvidia

Just an example page, but their wiki makes me jealous. Is it certain addons/plugins or is just formatting? Can we do all that on our pages too?

When I read their wiki pages, I wonder if it was all handmade or whether they have some WYSIWYG editor, mark some text and make it a tip or note or something.

For instance, near the end there is this warning "This article or section is out of date.", with note describing why and link to discuss it. Can we do stuff like that?

I'd like to do more on the wiki, work on some Linux articles for instance but having to do all that manually makes me depressed.

[Hendrik]

Some more pre-defined markups might be useful, like those tip, note and warning blocks.
Wiki is usually not big on WYSIWYG (although its possible), but from the source of that page a tip is just {{tip|This is a Tip!}} .. so not too much formatting anyway.

Don't ask me how to get that functioning in a Wiki though. Its what mediawiki calls "templates", if that helps bob to figure it out.

[glynor]

I've been working with Bob on some of that already.  That's why he upgraded to Wheezy last week, leading to the broken redirects that caused all the trouble that day, for example.

I need ParserFuctions, Bob.  I'll send you some stuff...

[InflatableMouse]

Cool so it won't be too long then until we can start to do some cool stuff  .

Thanks guys!

[glynor]

For the record, I've already added some useful Templates to the JRiver Wiki (fairly recently).  For example:  Template:Deprecated

This is used on all of the pages in the Archived FAQs category (or most of them anyway).

Basically, a Template is just a page on the Wiki.  Any page can be used as a template, but best practices is to put them in the Templates namespace.

What makes Templates useful is that you can transclude the information from a Template page into any other page using the following notation:
{{Template Name}}

When you do so, that text is replaced (transcluded) with the content from the template page.  But, the beauty is that this happens automatically when the page is viewed, so that later on, if you want to make a change, you just change the Template page and all the pages that use that template automatically "see" the changes.  Pretty much any cool formatting you see on places like Wikipedia and Wikia are the result of Templates, custom CSS, and MediaWiki Extensions.

JRiver, for good reason, isn't very keen on installing a whole pile of (possibly buggy) third-party extensions, each of which need to be individually maintained and updated (and checked to make sure they work with the version of the wiki you're using).  But... I need, at least, ParserFunctions.  The vast majority of the cool stuff you can do, like Template:Ambox, for example, require ParserFunctions (which is now included in MediaWiki by default, just not turned on).

ParserFunctions basically expands the number of "magic words" in the Wiki software to give you things like:
#if
#switch
#expr
And, with the right switch activated in the config, also provides StringFunctions.

Without these, you can't import basically any useful templates from places like MediaWiki.org or Wikipedia.

[glynor]

By the way, if we were on a more modern version of MediaWiki (I'm not complaining, 1.19 in Wheezy is a massive improvement over the oldschool 1.15 we were on before), then I'd be asking for Scribunto in addition to ParserFunctions.

I'd much, much, much rather write this kind of stuff in Lua than the weird ParserFunctions language that I don't really know.  But Scribunto requires 1.20 and we're on 1.19 (the default with Debian Wheezy).

More and more the Templates used heavily on Wikipedia, MediaWiki.org, and Wikia are Scribunto-hosted Lua.

But, with ParserFunctions alone, I can still build us some cool stuff.

[Hendrik]

I never understood why you would install a web application through distribution repositories. I don't like the whole distribution concept as it is, because it limits you to some arbitrary decision some guy working on Debian did, and PHP webapps are pretty much stand-alone, so why bother dealing with that mess.

Maybe it makes remembering to update it easier *shrug*

Maybe I'm just biased towards web things since before JRiver I worked in web, and there we would only get the base infrastructure from the distribution (ie. apache and php), everything else we liked to control ourselves.
Only by having control, I can say for sure what works and what doesn't.

[InflatableMouse]

Exactly.

Running Mediawiki from "source" changes nothing compared to running it from the official repo's.

This is how I ran mediawiki on my homeserver (debian wheezy too, netinstall).

[glynor]

Maybe it makes remembering to update it easier *shrug*

I think that's the deal...

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get update&&sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

[jmone]

Nathan, I took a crack at cleaning up the Blu-Ray page last night:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Blu-ray

Can you take a look and make sure I didn't make it full of lies?

Thanks.

Looks good! (made a few minor changes and additions).  I also added a "Getting Coverart, Movie / TV Information and Managing Discs with multiple parts" and referenced some stuff but I'm sure there is more to go into this part.

[glynor]

I also added a "Getting Coverart, Movie / TV Information."

I think this might make more sense in the Automatic Metadata Lookup page, which needs done anyway.  Which I might change to a different name... Does that feature really have a name?  Get Movie & TV Info is good as a menu choice, but a bit... Odd for a name.

Anyway, I didn't want that to become a dumping ground for everything that might have anything to do with Blu-Ray, but more of a concise guide to getting it working (a new user page).

[jmone]

I agree - I was just trying to make a link from the Process of Ripping the content to the parts in the Wiki on how to manage it (if that makes sense).  Feel free to delete, mod, change etc etc.

Also do you mind making a page from your template for "AVCHD" and I'll pop some stuff in that about these disk structures and playback

Thanks
Nathan

[glynor]

Also do you mind making a page from your template for "AVCHD" and I'll pop some stuff in that about these disk structures and playback

I'll take a look, but not till later.  Hey, by the way, this...

Code: [Select]

Music Video Tracks on a single Blu Ray disk using [http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Particles Particles]
Should be this:

Code: [Select]

Music Video Tracks on a single Blu Ray disk using [[Particles]].
When you link to an internal page within the same Wiki, you can just surround the page name with double-brackets (or use the Internal Link doohicky).  That's why it is best not to use page names and section names like this, by the way, because they're ugly and never useful as a direct link.  The single-bracket style of links are external links, and they have some additional limitations (not really relevant here) over internal links.  Much like with external links, you can change what the link "text" reads like this:

Code: [Select]

[[Particles|teh awesome]]
(The link text comes afterwards, just like an internal link, but they're separated by a pipe instead of whitespace.)

One thing using Internal links instead of external links provides is that they'll show up properly in the What Links Here for the page (and the other tools like this on the Special page).

[jmone]

Ok - I've stuffed up other ones at the bottom as well then!

[astromo]

I think this might make more sense in the Automatic Metadata Lookup page, which needs done anyway.  Which I might change to a different name... Does that feature really have a name?  Get Movie & TV Info is good as a menu choice, but a bit... Odd for a name.

Anyway, I didn't want that to become a dumping ground for everything that might have anything to do with Blu-Ray, but more of a concise guide to getting it working (a new user page).

For what it's worth, I tend to use the cues provided by MC when searching the Wiki FAQ page, so personally what's intuitive to me is to look for the term "Get Movie & TV Info" in the list. I agree that "Automatic Metadata Lookup" is technically specific and covers a broader subject area but it's not what I'm conditioned to think of when using the software. Does that make sense?

Along the same line, what's the thinking behind "File Properties" - see pic? This entry is currently under "T" because it relates to tagging. I'd recommend relocating it to sit in the "F" section.

BTW - I have sent an email requesting Wiki update access but no answer as yet. I can understand that it also makes sense to limit the amount of fingers poking around, so I'm not hassling. It would be easy to work at cross purposes some times.

[glynor]

Those alphabetical listings in the Category pages are automatically generated.  I'm guessing it was because of the bad page name.  I'm guessing the Category generation thing didn't like the parenthesis.  Not sure.  Anyhow, I fixed it.  I moved it to Tags, because that's what they are, but I also made a Redirect called File Properties, which is also in the FAQ category, so it'll show up in that list if someone looks explicitly.

Page names in the Wiki should really be as simple as is possible.  The idea is to use simple phrases that people might search for, and then to handle alternates with #REDIRECTS.  When you search on a Wiki, and you get an exact match, it takes you directly to the page (like an I'm Feeling Lucky search).  And, the Wiki software is designed for page names to be used inline.

It makes linking within articles much easier.  After I'm done writing a section, I scan through looking for keywords.  The idea is that you can just look for keywords that should be linked, and the relevant page should probably already have that name (or a redirect for different versions of the same thing).  That's why the Wikipedia China page is called: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

You can scan through other pages easily, highlight the word China, and hit the Internal Link button, and it Just Works.  So, the main page is called China, but if you visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRC
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pr_of_c
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=State_of_China
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zhonghua_Renmin_Gonghe_Guo

They all redirect to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China (on the English language version, anyway).

Make sense?

By the way, I'm not trying to be a rules lawyer about it or anything... Just trying to teach people, because it works better if understand some basics (and it makes for less cleanup later).

Ok - I've stuffed up other ones at the bottom as well then!

I'd already cleaned up a ton on that page (including the two in your new paragraph before I posted about it).  As I said, no big deal.  It wasn't just you... The JRiver Wiki is littered with them.  And badly named pages, and orphaned sections, and... Sigh.  There's a bunch of good content in there, though almost all of it is outdated in some way, but it is scattered all over the place.  There are many, many pages about the same things (duplicates of duplicates of duplicates of content, with different names, in various stages of outdatedness).

But, I feel like I've made a little dent lately.

I'm also trying to make the beginnings of a Category hierarchy.  That's a long road, and I think it only really stands a chance if the base categories stay limited in number and very broad.  Sweeping sections, not detail.  For example, I've made a top-level Category for View Modes, but not for Theater View (which is a View Mode).  If Theater View has a bunch of its own sub-pages, then it can be a category too (like I have for Standard View), that is a subcategory of View Modes.  You know?

Ideas here would be welcome.

Be careful with Categories, though.  Without a Category management extension they are incredibly difficult to change later.  Because they are "created by" making a link on a page, to "delete" or "rename" one, you have to edit the link on every single individual page in the Category.

For example, Mark_h made this really nice series of pages with real-world examples of Smartlist Searches.  But he called the Category:

Category: Smartlist:Examples:Audio

That's not how Category hierarchies work... You couldn't click on Smartlist to be taken to stuff about Smartlists with them colon-separated like that.  The "name" of the Category was "Smartlist:Examples:Audio".  And he had Smartlist:Examples:Image and I think even a Smartlist:Examples:Video, but the vast majority were all in the Audio section (one of the other two was completely blank, and the other had like two items, one of which was duplicated in the Audio Category).  So, that's not how that works...  I restructured it like:

Contents >
     Search >
          Search Examples

(Traditionally, the Category structure is rooted in Category:Contents.  I don't know why, or the history, but I'm sure you could look it up on a wiki somewhere.)

If we get enough to break up Search Examples into subcategories, then it makes sense to break it up.  But otherwise it is best to keep them together.  Where that line falls is, of course, personal opinion.  I'm just trying to make less mess.

One of the things I want ParserFunctions for is to import Template:Disambiguation.  The first place I want to use it is on: http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Views.  Right now that redirects to View Modes, but MC has so many different things called Views.  One of my long term goals is to restructure and update that stuff.

The rough game plan I've been using for that is:

* View and Views: Disambiguation page.
* View Modes: The "big" UI modes -- Standard View, Theater View, Display View, Mini View, Cover View
* Media Views: The base concept of a "view" in Media Center, whether used in Standard, Theater, or Media Network.  Then, that page would be linked to sub-pages with:
** Standard Media Views
** Theater Media Views
** Network Media Views

I've started, the very basics of this, when I reworked the (top of) the Tree page as part of my Standard View little editing spurt.

I don't know... There's a bunch of old stuff about this from a variety of eras, but they all refer to "old namings" (MC12 era View Schemes), with Blue Steel or even older screenshots.

Blah blah blah...  I'm rambling.

I'm thinking about starting up the beginnings of a Style Guide, and linking it here:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Help_the_JRiver_Wiki

[glynor]

Oh yeah, and I wouldn't bother doing this right now, because it is going to be a pain in the butt to edit later, but you might notice that on my pages I've been trying to follow a coloring scheme for Menu selection hierarchies like Tools > Options > Audio > Audio Devices or whatever.

I've documented this here, but... If you're editing, I wouldn't bother much right now.  I want to make a template that does this, where you can provide parameters like:

{{Menu Flow|Style=MC|Tools|Options|Audio|Audio Devices}}

That way, we can alter that style later (with different coloring or fancy arrows between instead of right angle brackets, or whatever) and it makes them all uniform.  Makes technical reading (and writing) much easier if there is a consistent style.

Doing this to completion on JRiver's wiki (perhaps without them having an employee who is tasked with maintaining it as a, more primary, function of their job) is a fools errand.  I don't have the time to police and fix it as people help, and everyone won't know how to use the system, even if we appropriately document that (which is documentation for the documentation and you're getting deep into crazy-pants and never-gonna-happen territory)... But if we can get the most important and highest profile sections into shape, then I think it would make it much easier to use, and it would feel much more consistent, even if there was still a big "heap pile" in the FAQ as there is now.

But, alas, I need ParserFunctions.

Which I didn't remember to message Bob about.  Doing that now.

[astromo]

Make sense?

.. Yep ..

But, I feel like I've made a little dent lately.

Give yourself the understatement prize of the month (maybe year). You've been putting in some really solid work that's easy to digest as a reader. Thanks from me, at least.

[astromo]

Those alphabetical listings in the Category pages are automatically generated.  I'm guessing it was because of the bad page name.  I'm guessing the Category generation thing didn't like the parenthesis.  Not sure.  Anyhow, I fixed it.  I moved it to Tags, because that's what they are, but I also made a Redirect called File Properties, which is also in the FAQ category, so it'll show up in that list if someone looks explicitly.

Nice and looks pro to boot.

I think your vision for the Wiki future is sound and positive. Happy to help how I can.

[glynor]

Thanks, bob!!!

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Template:Ambox
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Template:Cquote
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Template:Disambig
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Template:Infobox

Some of them (like Infobox) still need a bit of CSS Work, and I need to go through and clean up my mess.  But... They're in there now!!

[InflatableMouse]

Awesome!

What do you think about a warning (like the info box but with a reddish background for instance)?

I'm fond of the "This article or section is out of date." one on Arch wiki too because you can insert it for a section with a reason, directly link to the Talk page to discuss it, without having to immediately correct the page. But users will be warned. I suppose it also helps with keeping it up2date, as it becomes obvious which parts need updating.

[glynor]

I already have a Template:Outdated.  Needed some of these to then update that one and make it nicer.

Generally, though, I do think that Ambox should be used sparingly.  For example, I'm a much bigger fan of Wikipedia's style of Template:Stub than most of the others out there that use Ambox.  Wikipedia has really been dialing back the use of Ambox over the past couple of years, and I think it has been an improvement (from the old days when you'd see tons of articles where you couldn't even see article text at all when you loaded the page because of a "stack" of graphical boxes on top).

But in any case, I agree that Template:Outdated and Template:Deprecated are both places where a nice Ambox makes sense.

[glynor]

Still needs more work, though.  Gotta clean up a bunch of CSS, and figure out how to fix the header colors on Template:Infobox.

[InflatableMouse]

Sounds good Ed.

Thanks a bunch for doing all this! I hope it will motivate some more people to work on wiki pages. I have a few that I'd like to work on myself, this will be a godsent.

[jmone]

Thanks Ed - I'm in awe (stuggle with bbc codes for formatting)    My approach to the wiki over the years has been to just edit in place or copy/pasta stuff then change it.  Getting the template stuff going for knobs like me would be great.

[glynor]

No problem (well, a bit of one, but it is fine).

I am taking a break for today, though, as I was tweaking one of my utilities and now I'm going to (try to figure out how to) clean up my own website crap.

[glynor]

I made:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Exclusive_access

And cleaned up a bit more in:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Audio_Output_Modes
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/WASAPI

To do:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Output_Format
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Bitstreaming
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Maximize_device_volume
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/ASIO
and basically all the rest of these:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/DSP

[jmone]

Good work Ed - I'm off on a 10 Day Family Holiday now so will check it out when back.

[glynor]

If anyone has the time, a bunch of the Licensing related pages could use a once-over.  I made a category that collects them all.
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Category:Licensing

A bunch of redundant information.  I'd suggest consolidating some of it here:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/License

Dunno if I'll have time.

[InflatableMouse]

As much as I'd like, I'm afraid doing the License stuff is not something I feel I should be doing.

I have been busy however. I started working on a Linux Guide, currently sitting in my scratch page and far from done. I also created a couple of templates and I'd like to know whether we can use them. They create a floating box for related articles. To see it in action:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/InflatableMouse-Related_Articles_Example

This template is responsible for its formatting. I have adjusted it with JRiver's black/blue colors:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Template:META_Related_articles_start

Template 'Related':
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Template:Related

Start and End templates:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Template:Related_articles_start
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Template:Related_articles_end

I did not create these but I copied them over from another wiki. There is something leftover to do though. The "Usage" part uses Template:Bc. I didn't want to copy that over as well because we have our own quote and info boxes but it also cascades into referencing a whole bunch of other templates which I then also would have to copy. We just need to fix the Usage part but I've not had much luck with that - I'm not sure how that works exactly.

So, what do you think? Can we use this?

[InflatableMouse]

I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm for the templates  ?

[jmone]

I'm keen but just got back from a Hiking trip with the Family so I'll try to see how it all works this weekend

[glynor]

I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm for the templates  ?

Just been busy here.  And tired.

[jmone]

OK - call me clueless.  How do I use these templates to create a new "AVCHD" entry?
Thanks
Clueless

[InflatableMouse]

OK - call me clueless.  How do I use these templates to create a new "AVCHD" entry?
Thanks
Clueless

Dear Clueless,

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Templates don't create new entries. Assuming an entry in this case means a new page on the wiki (or topic), the easiest way is to search for the pagename-to-be (AVCHD I suppose, in your case) and click the link that says "Create the page "AVCHD" on this wiki!"

Just been busy here.  And tired.

Didn't mean to sound impatient or anything, when I get enthusiastic I turn into a little boy. A gentle pat on the head will keep me quiet. For now. 

[glynor]

Assuming an entry in this case means a new page on the wiki (or topic), the easiest way is to search for the pagename-to-be (AVCHD I suppose, in your case) and click the link that says "Create the page "AVCHD" on this wiki!"

That's one way.  Unfortunately, when you create a page that way, the only way to find it will be to search for it again, which is generally bad practice.

The "right" way, since all Wiki articles should be linked to another article on the Wiki (orphaned pages are bad because you can't find them other than by search), is to simply select the text on another page where you want to make the link, and do this:


Surround the text of the page title you'd like to use in double-square brackets to make an Internal Link.

Which, when you save it, creates a "Red Link" (an internal link on the Wiki to a page that doesn't yet exist):



Then, you can click on it to make the page, and it is not an orphaned page.  Good practice on any Wiki is to avoid Orphans.  See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Orphan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Linking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_titles

[InflatableMouse]

Thanks, I didn't know that, obviously .

I gotta ask. Until now if I created a new page, I added

[[Category: Frequently Asked Questions|MadVR Guide]]

for example. This makes it appear on the main topic index, but its not linked from another page as you describe.

Is that good, or should I be doing it as you described?

[MrC]

FYI - link placed around AVCHD shown in the page fragment image above is a page from the MC 13 change logs.  I'd like to suggest we discourage the practice of modifying these historical documents, even with links, for several reasons:

  1. the page generation is entirely driven by script from a plain text file (so changes can get lost since they aren't in the "source" document)
  2. should we have to revert to using JRiver's change log documents, the changes will get lost and have to be re-integrated
  3. the pages will differ from changes logs elsewhere (Interact's; Alex B's blog: http://mc-changelog.blogspot.com/)

[jmone]

Ahhh still Clueless on doing this "right".  If someone can create a blank AVCHD page correctly I'll fill out the stuff.
Thakns
Nathan

[MrC]

jmone, click this link:

   http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php?title=AVCHD&action=edit&redlink=1

[jmone]

Thanks MrC - all updated!

[jmone]

...added a page for TV Tuners

[InflatableMouse]

Looks good!

[glynor]

Thanks, Nathan.

I lost a little steam as I'm working on something else right now, but I'll be back.

[jmone]

...added a blurb on BDAV

[jmone]

FYI - I've started on the Media Network and some of the pages it links to.

[jmone]

If anyone has any Home Networking Examples feel free to add to this page