Sunday, December 6, 2009

Separate manual pages

It is useful to have separate pages on the wiki for each tool so that the menu on the tool can have a link to a wiki page, as well as a link to the local documentation. The model is chamber, which has been moved from the contents page to its own page at:
http://fabmetheus.crsndoo.com/wiki/index.php/Skeinforge_Chamber

It is called Skeinforge_Chamber rather than just Chamber to avoid possible future name collisions with the rest of the wiki. It has a Previous, Next & Contents group on the top and bottom of the page to aid navigation through the skeinforge manual. The previous link points to the previous tool in the manual, which for chamber is currently carve, the next link points to the next tool, clip. The contents link point to the skeinforge contents page.

On the contents page, there is a link to chamber. To display the link as 'Chamber' while going to 'Skeinforge_Chamber', the wiki link is:
==== [[Skeinforge_Chamber|Chamber]] ====

Otherwise, the chamber page follows the format of the contents page, with a heading for each setting.

When adding new tool pages, please add it as a separate page using the chamber page as a model. For people who want to help develop the manual, please move existing pages to their own separate page, using the chamber model. Before each release, I will update the tools which have a separate manual page to add a manual page link to their help menus.

Cheers,
Enrique

13 comments:

  1. Hi Enrique,

    I have been looking into this but you beat me to it :)
    Was looking for a way to split wiki pages but there seams to be no way of doing that unless the old copy-paste. By the way, I proposed this already a while ago to Bogdan because I was getting confused by this extremely long page. He was no pro but I think he wont mind. I think it is better separate because the tools are also separate modules and they are often re-arranged into sub tools. Thats easy done in the wiki by resorting the links to all modules.
    I'll take some time this week to rearrange the structure and copy the content, will also try to streamline the layout.

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  2. Is it only my installation of Skeinforge that produces the following entry's on my Firefox Address line for the help functions?
    'http://\www.bitsfrombytes.com\wiki\index.php/?title=Skeinforge'
    As you can see its malformed.. I malformed addresses for all the help options that access the internet.

    First time user so may have done something very simple wrong?

    Windows XP SP3
    Firefox 3.5.5

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  3. Unfold,

    Thanks for planning to rearrange and copy content. One page is the way to start, but when it gets big breaking it up is the way to go.


    Conseils,

    Thanks for describing the Windows problem. I added a workaround in skeinforge to get around the windows bug. It is in the latest version at:
    http://members.axion.net/~enrique/reprap_python_beanshell.zip

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  4. "It has a Previous, Next & Contents group on the top and bottom of the page to aid navigation through the skeinforge manual. The previous link points to the previous tool in the manual, which for chamber is currently carve, the next link points to the next tool, clip. The contents link point to the skeinforge contents page."

    Sounds like this is hard to keep up to date not? When a tool disappears or being split you will need to update this manually

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  5. Maybe we should add a one line description of each tool to the contents page no?

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  6. Unfold,

    Good point about the previous, next & contents link being hard to maintain manually. So I've changed the navigation link at the model page:
    http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/wiki/index.php?title=Skeinforge_Chamber

    to be just a link to the contents. The source line is now:
    [http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/wiki/index.php?title=Skeinforge Contents]

    This is useful on its own now and in future, it would give a target for a script to automatically replace the contents navigation line with the previous, next and contents line.

    I also agree that a one line description should be added to the contents page, and I've done that with the Chamber link on the contents page.

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  7. Unfold,

    Oops, after I posted I looked at the source on the contents page and saw the correct format for wiki relative links, so the contents link should be:
    [[Skeinforge|Contents]]

    I've changed all the other incorrect format relative links which I could find.

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  8. Actually I changed to [[Skeinforge|Skeinforge Contents]] before reading your update. This because there is already an automatic contents box added which shows the contents of the current page...

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  9. I added screenshots to the skeinforge main wiki page with links to the tools. Dont know if we better consolidate this with the one line too descriptions.
    As a side note, the raft settings in the new skeinforge don't fit on my 13 inch MacBook Pro and there is no way to scroll or acces them...

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  10. Enrique, In the Skeinforge Settings window (the main window) it would be more logical imho to switch Profile Selection and Profile Type because the first one is dependent on the second. So first select Type and then the profile for that type.

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  11. Thank you Bogdan, Dave and Unfold for working on the manual and splitting out all the pages. The latest skeinforge at:
    http://members.axion.net/~enrique/reprap_python_beanshell.zip

    has the option of going to the manual, for all the new separate manual pages.


    Unfold,

    Eventually, raft will be split up. In the meantime, on Linux/KDE you can alt-drag a window to see all the fields. Alt-drag may work on Mac or the Mac may have another key to drag windows.

    Thanks for pointing out that it is more logical to have Profile Type first, it has been placed above Profile Selection in the latest version.

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  12. Hi Enrique,

    I have found that the first layer of a model is difficult to get right because Skeinforge doesn't allow you to set the speed and feed rate individually for that first layer (although it is possible to set the temperature). Would it be possible to have a couple of variables to allow this?

    Great application by the way!

    Cheers,
    Nigel

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  13. Hello :-)

    People like me are using Heated Build Platform, and we do not use raft and have our platform at about 110ÂșC for ABS: http://dev.forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,33327

    ABS sticks on it BUT first layer needs to be slow! I am being editing by hand the gcode for the first layer. Could Skeinforge have an option so we could define a different head and extrusion values?

    Thank you.

    ReplyDelete