[Bf-docboard] Wiki manual (was: Docboard re-activation)

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

I agree on bringing structure. It would help if such layouts follow the  
books we've been making a bit. Especially for a reference guide things  
should be easy to navigate, for readers as well as for people who add  
new pages.

The fact our wiki might go out of sync with a german one isn't a very  
good argument, it's important to look forward first: if we agree on  
tackling design and organizational issues in our wiki.

See also 2.3:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/
http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlII/

Her's my raw picture how to classify documents;

- Learning Blender
   - general workflow tutorials (creating projects)
   - feature related tutorials (i.e. texturing)

- Manual (descriptive overviews by feature)
   - UI conventions
   - Blender files
   - Modeling
   - Materials/shaders
   - Game engine
   - Python overview
   - etc

- Reference (editors, buttons, menus, hotkeys etc)
   - Installation
   - User presets
   - Screens/areas
   - 3D window
   - Ipo window
   - etc

- Extending Blender
  - Python
  - Plugins

- Contributions
   - stuff to be reviewed
   - feature proposals
   - case studies
   - and everything that's not classifyable, or opiniated, or too  
personal :)



-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
Blender Institute BV  Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam The Netherlands

On 6 Dec, 2008, at 13:56, mindrones wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have some proposals and questions for the wiki manual reorganization.
>
> 1) STRUCTURE
> I would like to edit the wiki Manual to make it more structured (I  
> wouldn't touch the contents).
>
> My proposal is to have Chapters as folders in the URL.
> For example this page url
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Axis_Locking
> would become
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Interaction_in_3D/ 
> Manipulation/Axis_Locking
>
> On the top of the page we would have these links
> < Manual | Interaction_in_3D | Manipulation | Axis_Locking
>
> This would let you know where you are in the manual and also jump  
> directly to the appropriate level.
>
> Say I wanna jump from Axis_Locking to Interaction_in_3D, now you have  
> to jump back to the Manual index and then choose Interaction_in_3D,  
> but the link to Manual takes me to the very beginning of the page, and  
> to reach the contents on the bottom you have to scroll a lot.
> I don't consider the back button in the browser an option :), if you  
> are new to Blender it's hard to say where you are in the wiki anyway.
>
> The second chapter would have this (quite obvious) structure:
>
> Manual
> 	Interaction in 3D
> 		Introduction
> 		Navigating in 3D Space
> 			Introduction
> 			Using the 3D View
> 			3D View Options
> 			Camera View
> 			Layers
> 			Local or Global View
> 		Grease Pencil
> 			Grease Pencil
>
> 		Manipulation in 3D Space
> 			Introduction
> 			Hotkeys
> 			Manipulators
> 			Manual/Gestures
> 			Axis Locking
> 			Pivot Points
> 			Proportional Edit
> 			Transform Orientations
> 			Transform Properties
>
> 2) SITE MAP?
> Is there a way to know everything is inside the wiki?
> A Site map would help to have an idea of what's going on there :)
>
> 3) SEARCH ENGINE
> It seems to me that the wiki search engine is quite inefficient, at  
> the moment I prefer to use  
> "site:http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual word_to_search" in  
> Google :)
> What do you think?
>
> 4) EDITING
> I'm actually using Plone for my site, with FCKEditor as the editor. It  
> is fast and intuitive, have a look here
> http://www.fckeditor.net/demo
> I see that it is available for mediawiki:
> http://mediawiki.fckeditor.net/
>
> This could speed a lot editing in wiki, so I've proposed that to  
> JesterKing, it is in his loooong todolist for wiki :)
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:JesterKing/Todo
>
> Is there anybody using it? Wdyt?
>
> 5) "TOP" ANCHORS
> Sometimes pages are too long, so I think we should use more the  
> anchors to reach the Top of the page, scrolling long text is  
> eye-fatiguing.
> Maybe this can be done in template? Like have the "Top" link addded  
> automatically in each section?
>
>
> Regards,
> Luca
>
> ____________
>
> http://www.mindrones.com
>
>
>
>
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