zabkat support forum

narayan wants to setup a xplorer2 wiki for documentation which should come in handy after the PDF manual effort foundered.

I looked into mediawiki install guide and it is not something I feel comfortable doing. Perhaps it's easy if you are experienced

so do we have any trustworthy experienced (in terms of wiki installation and management) x2 users that will take over the administration and installation of this wiki software?

thanks
nikos[/url]

To be precise, the OpenOffice (and its derivative LibreOffice) are unable to handle the complex layout of the document (380+ page full of nested tables and 1000+ figures, etc.) and they crash often.

I have already written the same manual three times from scratch.

Rather than wasting that kind of effort, I would like to transfer the entire manual in wiki format.

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Tips for the would-be volunteer:

Mediawiki has a few addons to export pdf manual on demand (each user can export the latest version of the wiki as pdf).

These addons vary in features. The pdf output can be optimized for printed or soft copy version.

* The "soft copy" version of pdf is just like the present manual (with links jumping internally and to Internet destinations). This version is meant for reading on screen, but not for printing a book.

* The "print" version of pdf converts internal links into page numbers (so that you can flip to that page in a printed book). Similarly, the external links are converted to printed URLs, so that you can enter those links in your browser. In short, this version is meant for printing a book only; not for reading on screen.

Some of these addons are meant for B/W printing, so all images lose color.

The volunteer should keep all this in mind while selecting and installing the addon(s). A little research is required.

Thanks in advance!

I did a quick WikiMedia setup on my computer and created a test page: N/A anymore since it won't be needed

I would be interested in doing some research about it and managing the xplorer2 wiki, the only issue is that I'm working against multiple deadlines and I have very little free time on my hands. If it can wait until the end of this month, I would happily take care of it piece by piece.

If someone else would like to take the task, that's still fine, I understand a month may not be a short time to wait.

P.S.: the web-server is running on my own computer, so the page may be inaccessible if I have Internet connection issues or if my computer is off, but that's unlikely to happen. Or if someone happens to be in my blocked IP ranges that would also mean denied access.

Looks good! Let's not worry about the delays. Easy does it...

Nikos, do you want me to host MediaWiki for you? You'll need to simply point some sub-domain on my hosting. I have a DreamHost they have it very streamlined. No ads, nothing in return. Send me a PM.

I had a greek friend of mine help me in the end
thanks for the help volunteers, I will surely contact you when i run into troubles in the future

I sometimes work outside metro areas on the end of satellite links, they are not only slow and unreliable they are also <pardon my french>ing expensive.

The availability of cheap metro speed (i.e. > 1Mbps) telecommunications services should not be a pre-requisite to having access to documentation for what is essentially an offline product.  If I don't even need an RFC1149 network to use X2, which should I need anything better for the doco.

None of the wiki's I've used have anything resembling a half decent search, most are poorly maintained and dreadfully organised.  The only wiki-like thing that more or less works for me is MS Technet - but can you imagine how much that costs to operate.

I know I'm fighting a losing battle here, so I'll make one request - please make the source files for the current PDF available to those who want them, I'm sure I've got a .chm compiler here somewhere.  

Many years ago we could send men to the moon, launch space vehicles to the edge of the solar system & beyond and provide decent doco and help facilities.  Now we can barely manage to keep someone in low earth orbit, or even know that metric screw threads don't work with whitworth screw threads.  What we actually know seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of information in which we are said to be drowning.

RP

narayan says that a wiki can be exported as pdf

The proposal is much like the work he did for the Renamer Wiki Help which includes a link to automatically generate a complete paged PDF copy of the most recent document, as I believe he described above.  There's no real difference from the current way of doing things, as the PDF is downloaded separately now anyway, except the upkeep is made significantly easier and you can get a hot-off-the-griddle PDF immediately.

People who are not comfortable with pdf files can rip the wiki with winhttrack;and use x2 to search for titles and text.

Or make their own chm from the local copy of the ripped wiki, and use the search facility.