This is just suggestion, but IMHO wiki would be really usefull, its kinda painfull browsing all these forums, it would be much easier to organize things on wiki.
If panda staff agrees with this…
Wiki for panda 3d should have:
Syntax coloring
Revision backup
Auth tools(Reg, login to edit content to prevent bots and evil humans)
Q? WYSIWYG? I dont like this kind of stuff, but som do so leave it open…
Q? integrating version control somehow? SVN, git? I dont know how usefull this would since most of the scripts are tiny <50 lines…
Q? [important] “script page” and that script page would be separated in two parts, code and comments, where users would be able to see diff between current and last version. I believe this wouldnt be hard to integrate in some existing wiki engine. Multifile script support would be cool.
“”"
My first thoughts were to start posting pastebin links, and maybe that would get others to use it, but wiki would be much more practical.
“”"
All these are suggestions, it would be good if you could somehow improve them…
well… we already have a wiki. and an faq. the manual (link at the navigation bar above) is one. its well hidden so noone starts messing with it unless he knows what he’s doing.
I see that, but i thought something else, i learn most about panda from forums…
It would be nice if someone could create snippet, post it and other could edit it… and then later viewer could easily switch between versions of snippet?
maybe not extending wiki, but improving forums, and giving them this svn like functionality?
thats what the code-snippset section is for. once you have the code working you can paste it there so others can learn or use it. i see relatively little use for keeping old, maybe broken code snippsets.
i already mentioned something like that about 2-3 months ago.
nearly nobody notices that the manual is a wiki system and even if anybody does, he doesn’t dare to damage the straight-lined manual.
a wiki, where you can see that it’s a wiki (wiki[media,pedia] look and feel) would lead more people to modify it and you could create pages with uncompleted stuff and you wouldn’t have to link it in any book-like index/TOC; you could discuss each part and such things. when did you look around for any discussion pages at the current manual/wiki last time? i never did, as far as i can remember.
take a look at OGRE’s wiki. i think, it’s one of the best i’ve ever seen. it’s modular, simple and full of life - i’d like to have it as a goal to redesign panda3d’s wiki after this example.
the forum is cool - true, but it’s a pain to look through it for all the code snippets, of which some surely are not working anymore. there’s also no order, but the sorting by date - not very helpful at all. syntax hilightning or plain-text download would be very nice.
wrong turn! thinking that way there will bring no change. WHY don’t we have access to the page and how can we get it; can we at all? if not, i’d suppose a new page, independent of CMU or anybody else.
well, that’s my opinion, but it seems there are more people with such thoughts and surely not all of them post it to the forums.
ps: sorry for my bad english - i’m tired and therefore my english sucks even more…
Meh, I just typed here a large post but it got erased by IE.
@Nemesis: We don’t have access because Josh left CMU. Only the server maintainer has access, and he wants to wait giving us access until he placed a new server, I believe.
@GrizzLyCRO: Like treeform said: everyone has access. Just click the tiny blue dot in the lower left corner. There’s a reason we hide the fact that it’s a wiki. If all beginners would be posting their snipplets and what they learnt we can’t keep the manual to be good and professional material. By hiding it, the users that become more advanced in Panda3D will discover it either by finding the dot or by reading a forum post saying it’s a wiki. This works pretty well – the manual is pretty good, imho, so don’t go around telling everyone it’s a wiki.
I wouldn’t mind a wiki-styled manual really. I’d trust users to generally not be an arse, as long as its not anonymous editing I think you’ll get more useful input rather than people doing silly edits. I’d point to the ogre wiki’s as evidence of this.
Of course, we would still need community access to the website for this to happen.
I think there is room for both. A wiki and a manual really serve different functions. A manual should be a cohesive introduction and instruction, written in one voice, that presents the fundamental concepts of Panda in a logical progression. A wiki is more like a scratchpad for people to jot down notes they’ve discovered. It tends to be much freer and looser, and tends to fill up with notes of the form “if you have particular problem X, try solution Y”.
Panda’s manual happens to be implemented as a wiki, but it tries hard to pretend it isn’t. It’s a wiki only for technical convenience, but since it wants to remain a coherent manual, it doesn’t want to serve the needs that a wiki normally serves.
I don’t see a problem with having a separate wiki section, which has an obvious login link, and which is allowed to fill up with the sorts of things that wikis tend to fill up with.
and when is this going to happen? you already said that few months ago.
i think, newbie code (corrected by pros) would help much more than ‘professional material’. the manual is adressed to newbies, as well as at advanced users, so why do you only want to serve the second ones?
a platform in sense of ‘from noobs for noobs’ is a more than good idea and i’m sure everybody would profit from that.
hiding tings to users is not a solution for a clean and good manual/wiki. if you’re that strict, how about locking every wiki page, then, so that every change must be accepted by a trusted, advanced user. wikipedia is doing that with some bigger pages, too.
Regarding the CMU admin thing, we really have no control over it at all. We can’t even poke them along so all we can do is wait for the server and the access we will get.
That would be a very nice place to have a community wiki
If you would like help, i did the configuration work and design on the Horde3d wiki, plus the filmstrip code and created a very flexible template system to work with, take a look at horde3d.org/wiki/index.php5?title=Main_Page
A community wiki is a nice place to put some tutorials and work out stuff that may latter find its way into the manual. Wikis are a great tool.
PS: It’s formatted to be pretty and useful not exactly compliant with any wiki format policy.
