History: Ogre Wiki Overview

Source of version: 64 (current)

{TRANSCLUDE(page="Layout_div7", img="1736")}{DIV(class="bigBold")}Ogre Wiki - The Grand Overview{DIV}
About the Ogre Wiki and how it's organised.
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!Introduction
This page tries to explain what this wiki is, how it's organised and the thought behind it.

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!Motivation
The MediaWiki powered Ogre Wiki is a great resource, but it suffers from several problems:
* The information is hard to find: pages get lost and its not easy to get an overview.
* The information therein is not kept up to date.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a structured wiki instead?
Where each and every page is part of a hierarchy?

There's a lot of quality content in our wiki, so why not take maximum advantage of that wealth of information?

And, in the end, make it easier to update and even extend that resource?

The new Ogre Wiki tries to satisfy those questions.

!Structure
The best answer to disorder is order.(:smile:)

Picture a room full of randomly arranged books, and imagine trying to find the information you need.
You realise that you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to keep them organised - and one day you become fed up with it.
After much thought, you decide to get six bookshelves to help you organise them.
That would serve as the first, and most important, step towards a total overview.

!!The Main Sections
The wiki is divided into 6 sections: '''Tutorials''', '''Cookbook''', '''Libraries''', '''Tools''', '''Development''' and '''Community'''.

Those are - under the hood - ordered, hierarchical structures, where each page is either a child, parent or both.

A birds eye view of the sections and what's in them:
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{BOX(class="Layout_box6",width="100%")}{DIV(class="bigBold")}1) Tutorials{DIV}
* Basic Tutorials
* Intermediate Tutorials
* In-Depth Tutorials
* External Tutorials
* Older Tutorials
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---
{BOX(class="Layout_box6",width="100%")}{DIV(class="bigBold")}2) Cookbook{DIV}
*Codebank
*Snippets
*Experiences
*Articles
{BOX}
---
{BOX(class="Layout_box6",width="100%")}{DIV(class="bigBold")}3) Libraries{DIV}
*Libraries
*Assembling a Toolset
*Alternative Languages
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@@@
{BOX(class="Layout_box6",width="100%")}{DIV(class="bigBold")}4) Tools{DIV}
*Tools
** Exporters
*DCC Tutorials
*DCC Articles
*DCC Resources
{BOX}
---
{BOX(class="Layout_box6",width="100%")}{DIV(class="bigBold")}5) Development{DIV}
*Roadmap
*Building Ogre
*Installing An SDK
*Setting Up An Application
*FAQs
*Summer of Code
*Core Ogre Articles
{BOX}
---
{BOX(class="Layout_box6",width="100%")}{DIV(class="bigBold")}6) Community{DIV}
*Project Using Ogre
*Contractors
*Recommended Reading
*Wiki
{BOX}
{CUT}

!!!Tutorials
This is where the '''official''' tutorials live.
This structure is divided into 5 sections:
* Basic Tutorials
* Intermediate Tutorials
* In-Depth Tutorials
+ Advanced Tutorials has been abandoned and merged in this section.
* External Tutorials
+ Links to tutorials hosted elsewhere.
* Older Tutorials
+ Those are tutorials which need a lot of attention to become current.
+ Kept mainly due to historical reasons.
Any source code is in child pages of the tutorial page to which they belong.

tutorial overview page uses INCLUDE and the main section pages uses toc...
!!!Cookbook
Snippets, tutorials, articles...
* CodeBank
+ {MONO()}WIP{MONO} a quick way to submit smaller snippets.
* Snippets
+ Categorised wiki pages with code.
* Experiences
+ Series of '''Post-mortems''' covering a wide range of real-world Ogre projects (Needs contributors!)
* Ogre Articles
+ Wiki pages *without* code goes here.
!!!Libraries
Libraries goes here - everything which is not a tool.
* Libs
+ Addon Libraries - like NxOgre, SkyX, Hydrax, ...
* Alternative Languages
+ MOGRE, OgreDotNet, ...
* Assembling A Toolset
+ Overview of all the other libraries, besides Ogre, which you might need.
!!!Tools
Exporters, tools, utilities - everything else but code.
* DCC Tools
+ Exporters, utilities, ...
* DCC Tutorials
+ Various tutorials related to content-creation, tools usage, etc.
* DCC Articles
+ Guides, etc. covering tools, arts, pipe-line, ...
* DCC Resources
+ List of resources related to tools, assets, ...
* Assembling a Production Pipe-Line
+ Overview of the things you might need to get assets into your Ogre projects.
!!!Development
All things related to the development of Ogre goes here: roadmap, how to build Ogre, articles written by the Ogre Team, ...
* Roadmap
* Building Ogre
* Installing the Ogre SDK
* Setting Up An Application
* Frequently Asked Questions
* Google Summer Of Code
* Help Requested
* Ogre Core Articles

!!!Community
'''Wiki''' is the main bulk of the Community section, but it also contains other, community related information.
* Projects Using Ogre
+ Games, tools, engines and frameworks powered by Ogre.
* Recommended Reading
+ List of literature recommended by the Ogre community.
* Contractors
+ List of people offering Ogre related services commercially.
* Wiki
+ Help, guides, to-do lists - the backstage area of this wiki.

!!The Hidden Sections
In addition to the main, visible sections above, there's several '''hidden''' sections or - more accurate: structures in this wiki.

!!!Ogre Lexicon
((Ogre Lexicon)) is a information bank, glossary, vocabulary, you name it - of common terms associated with Ogre and what Ogre is associated with.
All pages in this structure __must__ have names starting with a prepending dash!
See ((Ogre Wiki Use Cases)) for instructions on how to add Ogre Lexicon entries.
!!!Templates
This is where you put all the templates for use in the rest of the wiki.
Equivalent to the Template namespace in the old MediaWiki powered wiki.

!!!Users
All user pages should go in this structure.

!!!Talks
This is the old Talks pages.
There's still some good stuff in it, although it's obsoleted by the fact that each page bears a Comments section.
Unlike Talks, the comments are signed by the submitter and there's date and threaded layout as well.
And they're __on__ the page in question.

!!!Sandbox
This is the '''anything-goes''' structure.
Use it to train yourself, try out ideas, and keep works in progress.
Ask a WikiAdmin to move, delete or help out if need be.

!!!!How does a wikiadmin move a page?
* Go to the structure edit page by clicking the structure edit icon (treelike picture) in the structure nav header.
* Find the page and click the delete icon (red cross).
* Remove only from structure. (Important!)
* Confirm your action.
* While still on the structure edit page, find the page where you want your new page to be a child of, and click the View button (magnifier image).
* When you're viewing the page in question, enter the name of the page you deleted from the structure into the Add Page text field and check the 'Child' box, just like you would add a new child page.
* If the page exists - which we know it does - it will be added as a child of the page.
!!The Main Decisions
A structured wiki comes at a price: You can't just create a page and start writing.
You need to think about where to put the page first.

Therefore some decisions has been made.

!!!All pages must belong to a structure
All pages, except the Main page and the Sandbox belongs to a structure.

That means that to add a page, you need to first navigate to the place where you want the page to be put.

New pages should be added from the structure header '''Add Page''' textbox, not by clicking a yet-to-be-created wiki link.

Although the '''stray''' page can be added to a structure after it's creation, it's far easier to do it right from the onset.

__Benefits:__

__Drawbacks:__
!!!Ogre Lexicon page names are prepended with a dash
To avoid name clashing with regular wiki pages, all pages in the ((Ogre Lexicon)) __must__ be created from the Ogre Lexicon structure, and their name __must__ be prepended by as dash.
For instance, to add a new Ogre Lexicon entry for '''Wiki''', create a page called -Wiki.

In order to make a lexicon page turn up on the ((Ogre Lexicon)) table of contents, you need to categorise it as '''Lexicon''' - when adding a new page to the Ogre Lexicon structure, the page will automatically inherit the '''Lexicon''' category, otherwise use the '''Categorise''' tool in the sidebar.

That means that ((Wiki)) and ((-Wiki)) refers to two different things: a regular wiki page and an Ogre Lexicon entry.
Use the LEX wiki-plugin - the {IMG(src="img/icons/book.gif")}{IMG} button on the toolbar - to link to the ((-Wiki)) lexicon entry: {LEX()}Wiki{LEX}.

__Benefits:__
*You don't have to worry about wiki page names and lexicon page names because they can never clash.
*Links to the Ogre Lexicon looks different from regular links. What You See Is What You Get.
*When hovering over the Ogre Lexicon links with your mouse pointer, a title will show the description of the page. Therefore you can stay on the page in question, if the description is enough to enlighten you. :)
*When reading a page with lots of Ogre Lexicon links, you will not get too distracted, because the links are styled to be less intrusive.

__Drawbacks:__
*A bit more work is involved.

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((Ogre Wiki Use Cases|#Adding an Entry in the Ogre Lexicon|Ogre Wiki Use Cases - Adding an Entry in the Ogre Lexicon))
((Help - Wiki Plugins|#LEX|LEX wiki-plugin))
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!!Where To Put It
This wiki has been carefully organised to ensure a logical and intuitive structure, but even so, some things are not easily categorised and could belong in more than one section.

!!!Pages

!!!Files and Images

!Features

!!Productivity

!!Overview

!!Nothing Gets Lost

!!Hot Out Of The Oven

!!!The Ogre Wiki Tracker

!!!The Codebank

!!!The Ogre Lexicon

!Plusses And Minuses
!!More Power More Responsibility
!!The Inevitable Tiki Versus MediaWiki
Let's put it this way:
{QUOTE()}Where MediaWiki is C, Tiki is C++.{QUOTE}
That sums it up nicely.

To elaborate a bit, let's look at the differences:
Categories Tags
HTML CSS
Speciality Versatility

!!!Tiki Contributions
!!!!phpBB Authentication
!!!!Plugin TRANSCLUDE
!!!!Plugin Toc Improvement
!!!!Alternative Center Tag
!!!Ogre Wiki Specifics
!!!!Plugin LEX
!!!!Plugin WIKIPEDIA
!!!!Plugin CUT
!!!!Custom Structure Administration Templates

!Conclusion

!What Now?

!!Use Cases
((Ogre Wiki Use Cases))
History: Ogre Wiki Overview

Source of version: 64 (current)

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