The Future of the QL Wiki

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NormanDunbar
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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by NormanDunbar »

Afternoon All,

I had a brief look at the WiClear source code last night, and a small play in the sandbox on the Ql Wiki. Interesting indeed.

It seems that definitions, ';term:definition' don't render correctly. At least, not on my tablet running Chrome! They should render as a definition List, <dl>...</dl> in HTML, but just render as the input text. I can see the code in the source, where it supposedly deals with definitions, but it's not working. I also had problems seeing any effect to Citations, Anchors and References. A problem for later I suspect. I've therefor updated the formatting document I put up a couple of days ago.

In addition, the database document I uploaded yesterday has been corrected too. The assumed description of one of the tables was incorrect on my part. WC_CONTENT_USER_EMAIL is used to email the user when the "watched" content (aka page) changes. This has been corrected.

If you go to this like: https://qdosmsq.dunbar-it.co.uk/downloads/QLWiki/ you can see and download both documents, if you wish. ;-)


Cheers,
Norm.


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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by QLvsJAGUAR »

RWAP wrote:Urs owns sinclairql.net (but does not have time to sort out his existing site)
Got a PM from Rich on May 25th. My reply was "There are some broken links which I'm aware of. Will all be fixed on a rainy day."
Well there were some rainy days recently. Result is that the sinclairql.net site is now complete again.


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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by adev »

I'm a bit late to this discussion (sorry) having not been around at all for a while...

Having gone through something slightly similar a couple of times now, albeit just with forums rather than a whole community, I hope I can add something useful.

First - who takes it on?

I'd suggest, based on experience, that it's best handled by a small group rather than one individual. The group can be informal - i.e. there's no point setting up Ltd Companies or partnerships or any of that jive - they just cost extra money for no discernible benefit - do you really want to have to provide a pension, for example, for all the directors of a Ltd Co? It's the law now... I'd recommend 5 people - an odd number so that any controversial decisions aren't tied in a vote; any community should be able to muster 5 volunteers; and it allows for the temporary loss of any one or even two or three members at a time without losing everything. It also prevents one person from "selling out" - a fate suffered by a popular machining forum a few years ago.

The group, once "assembled", sets up the various accounts and services needed to host the community online. I'd suggest, as a minimum, a dedicated virtual server (I'd recommend, from personal experience, Linode. they're very fairly priced, bloody quick, and if the community outgrows the level of server its on, it's a breeze to expand upwards. And it starts at $10/month... End of advertorial ;)), a PayPal account in the name of the group, and a domain name. Some years ago I grabbed "qluser.org" (with vague plans, copyright permitting, of uploading scans of every QL User/QL World magazine ever published), which I would be happy to donate to the cause. I believe Urs has also offered perpetual use of any subdomains of sinclairql.com, which is very generous & IMHO should be taken up on. 2 domain names = more cost of course, but also provides a handy backup should one of them go missing.

The hard bit, of course, is bringing everything together... all without upsetting anyone. Not easy, but it can be done.

It's been a long while since I've been active on the QL scene (despite owning one since mid 1984, I still have my original QL, although it is sadly non-operational & in bits at the moment, and I managed to break the flying lead which was obviously a Sinclair hardware patch. However, as probably one of the younger QL users - I was just 12 when ours arrived - I'm happy to volunteer to help carry the candle onwards. I've probably got the ability to drag the Wiki over to a new host & fiddle with the URLS, set up forum software if it's decided to move the QL forum onto hosting, etc. The only thing I don't have right now is the financial position to guarantee continuity. Long story short, I'm trying to immigrate my Chinese wife to the UK, which is a long and expensive process. So for at least the next 12-18 months, every penny I have is being spent either on her, or the tax man...

So.. that's my thoughts. Rich - if you haven't already had a better offer, I will volunteer to take over the wiki. I will also volunteer to be one of the group (if a group it is to be), but not it's "leader". I don't do leading. Quite happy to sit in the back room twiddling the keyboards, just don't make me get up there and make speeches.... if you know what I mean.


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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by NormanDunbar »

Morning All,

I've been quietly using up my lunch hours recently, writing a wiki parser that will hopefully allow "us" to take the mysql database content in the wc_content table, and convert it to almost anything we like.

I'm testing at the moment and have a few minor bugs to sort out, as well as some things to do with converting urls etc, but hopefully I'll be done soon.

The main program reads the text from a file, created by mysql, one file per wiki page, and uses a separate parameter file to convert stuff to another format. I'm currently testing with html output.

Wish me luck! Oh, and the code will be on the Sinclair QL repository on Github, soon. Honest!


I just thought I'd keep this topic moving along.....


Cheers,
Norm.


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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by RWAP »

Glad to see some progress is being made :) The QL Wiki is an essential resource which is currently under-used. People probably look at the wikipedia entry and rely on that as being gospel when it is actually very poor.

I did try updating WIkipedia some years ago, but got banned, as they saw it as self promotion !


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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by XorA »

NormanDunbar wrote:Morning All,

I've been quietly using up my lunch hours recently, writing a wiki parser that will hopefully allow "us" to take the mysql database content in the wc_content table, and convert it to almost anything we like.

I'm testing at the moment and have a few minor bugs to sort out, as well as some things to do with converting urls etc, but hopefully I'll be done soon.

The main program reads the text from a file, created by mysql, one file per wiki page, and uses a separate parameter file to convert stuff to another format. I'm currently testing with html output.

Wish me luck! Oh, and the code will be on the Sinclair QL repository on Github, soon. Honest!


I just thought I'd keep this topic moving along.....


Cheers,
Norm.
Nice work, we might have to rename you Stormin Norman after this :-D


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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by Outsoft »

RWAP wrote:Glad to see some progress is being made :) The QL Wiki is an essential resource which is currently under-used. People probably look at the wikipedia entry and rely on that as being gospel when it is actually very poor.

I did try updating WIkipedia some years ago, but got banned, as they saw it as self promotion !
We have reach 1010 titles preserved:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bz4v8whvjds1s ... a.txt?dl=0

Without touching or using your Preservation folder.

And we have many other material dumped to work on.

When will arrive at a reasonabily point we will check all your archive.

For "Winny" conversion I've just controlled and tested many of your preserved stuff: I see that will be not so difficult to add your stuff in our list in the near future.

Then all the material will be ready for a new BIG Wiki update ;)

But we need people that will do it ;)

We need also a PIC for every Loading Screen/Menu and INGAME/PROGRAM for every QL title and explain that are 128K only, no Minerva/Speedscren/Lightning/TK2/SGC/GC compatibile etc..etc...etc...


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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by NormanDunbar »

XorA wrote:Nice work, we might have to rename you Stormin Norman after this :-D
I have been called worse!

Cheers,
Norm.


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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by NormanDunbar »

I've got a pretty near finished html conversion uploaded to https://github.com/NormanDunbar/QLWikiConverter but at the moment you'll need a decent c++ compiler to build it.

You should be able to open the *.cbp (Code blocks project file) in Code blocks too. I think!

Html conversion is hard coded for testing but will be extracted soon.

EDIT: By the way, you will be interested in the "working" branch - that's the up to date one, the "master" branch is a bit behind - I still have some merging to do as testing progresses!


Cheers,
Norm.


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Re: The Future of the QL Wiki

Post by Outsoft »

NormanDunbar wrote:I've got a pretty near finished html conversion uploaded to https://github.com/NormanDunbar/QLWikiConverter but at the moment you'll need a decent c++ compiler to build it.

You should be able to open the *.cbp (Code blocks project file) in Code blocks too. I think!

Html conversion is hard coded for testing but will be extracted soon.

EDIT: By the way, you will be interested in the "working" branch - that's the up to date one, the "master" branch is a bit behind - I still have some merging to do as testing progresses!


Cheers,
Norm.
Very interesting!


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