Talk:Main Page/Archive/2006-2011

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Making the manual accessible via wiki software

On the other hand, I would recommend to also look into making "The Manual" editable via some sort of web based frontend, this would also ensure that people are able to easily contribute modifications to the manual, which is really the ultimate source for flightgear users. A possible approach might be to import the underlying LaTex sources in docbook format into some sort of docbook based wiki (i.e. http://sourceforge.net/projects/doc-book/).

As the manual is maintained in LaTex, is would be very hard to translate the wiki notes to include them in the manual. I suspect that this will be a "Won't Fix" as it is easier to copy and paste the text from the wiki and go from there. I am open to ideas though. Gorilla 06:33, 2 March 2008 (EST)

Using a dedicated FAQ database

Also, I feel there are some sections covered in the wiki that aren't really optimally handled by a wiki: most notably the "FAQ" section should preferably be implemented via some sort of dynamic FAQ system (i.e. http://www.phpmyfaq.de), likewise the sections titled "Bugs", "TODO", "Feature Requests", "ideas" etc. could probably all be handled far more effectively by using a real bug tracker such as bugzilla (http://www.bugzilla.org/), phpbugtracker (http://phpbt.sourceforge.net/) or mantis (http://www.mantisbt.org).

Using a dedicated bug tracker

A couple of days ago I started setting up a local test bugZilla installation, while I am currently unable to provide reliable hosting, I would really not mind installing it on whatever webspace is available, likewise I can provide the preconfigured database dump if someone else wants to use the preconfigured Flightgear specific categories.--FlightZilla 17:59, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

  • how to define and limit editing rights for certain users?

It's better to have one consolidated source of information for both bugs and descriptions. For now, user has to search through mailing lists, forums, user manuals (even not a single user manual, but several) and this wiki. It's absolutely not convinient for both users (they spend lot's of time searching required information) and developers (they spend lot's of time updating and syncronizing certain information in various sources).

This wiki is suitable for bug tracking too. Users can provide feedback in a convinient form. They just open the corresponding page and add their bug to the list. Developers can respond to the posted bugs right away. Mailing lists are a lot less user-friendly and effective and a lot less popular among users (not developers) in this regard, this is the reason why some bugs may stay unreported and why many users forget about FlightGear as soon as they run into a problem.

Unfortunately, it seems to me, this wiki is not popular among developers and users. -- Alfozavr 06:59, 17 June 2007 (EDT)

Backups

Is the database regularly backed up? What about hosting the wiki directly at flightgear.org? --MILSTD 15:25, 4 February 2008 (EST)

Yes, there are daily backups of the code and of the database. We also have off-site backups. Hellosimon 17:04, 4 February 2008 (EST)

Updates

I've updated MediaWiki to 1.11.1 so if you notice any regressions let me know. Hellosimon 15:03, 2 March 2008 (EST)

The wiki has moved to a new server which should relieve the performance problems. Hellosimon 11:26, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

Regressions

  • code passages (i.e. XML) are not highlighted anymore

Proposed Additions

Regarding the manual: isn't there a possibility to export wikimedia pages to PDF format? That way, we could maintain the whole manual via this wiki. Any thoughts?--FlightZilla 18:10, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

If you check out the following links, you'll see that there are extensions available that would make it possible to easily provide PDF exports for all contents stored here, that way it would also become feasible to consider migrating the entire manual over to this wiki, so that it would also become more maintainble in the end: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiPDF http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PDF_Export --FlightZilla 17:21, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

Hello, guys. If I get it right, you're discussing various documentation types here.

I think, this wiki is a lot more convenient than any other form of keeping documentation and at the same time communicating. It can be edited fast and easily and maintained up-to-date. However, the following questions need be solved:

  • how to convert it to an offline version (maybe .pdf) so that it could be bundled with the FlightGear base package?

Formatting problem

The POTD does not format correctly at 1024x768 in Firefox, the text on most POTD creates a large space above and below the image. The POTD needs to either have a full page width, or much less text, or some other change in the formatting. Fg 15:50, 29 September 2008 (EDT)

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