Laurie/Archive 1

Day One--looking up

• I see that e-mail notifications are available in user preferences. Cool! I turned mine on.
• How about on your user page you just put, "I am Laurie, and I started PGV Wiki." Short and sweet!
• Thank you for turning on anoymous editing. I don't think you will regret it.
• Speed is great. You fixed it!
• I have a very good feeling about the direction this is headed.

--Tom Haws 10:17, 18 November 2005 (EST)

Ideas for success

Initially let's make lots of red links. Entropy is our smallest enemy at first. Attraction is our biggest challenge. Tom Haws

Let's see what we can do to make asking a question as easy as eating a cookie. I tried to explain it on the Main Page, but you may have newbie insight into something I assumed that I shouldn't have. Tom Haws 10:17, 18 November 2005 (EST)

User page conversations

User page conversations are always a bit tricky. Some people answer questions at their own page. That is a trifle arrogant perhaps. I just answered your question at my page. I don't think I will make that my habit. I will think about the side bar. Tom Haws 10:42, 18 November 2005 (EST)

Languages

I will have some questions for you about languages, but it may take a day to get back on. p.s. Nice logo! Tom Haws 16:22, 21 November 2005 (EST)

Unreachable at 1540 GMT Monday

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://wiki.phpgedview.net/ 

The following error was encountered: 

Unable to determine IP address from host name for wiki.phpgedview.net 
The dnsserver returned: 

Name Error: The domain name does not exist. 
This means that: 

The cache was not able to resolve the hostname presented in the URL. 
Check if the address is correct.

However, the DNS still appears to be OK using my ISP's network tools page. So some DNS's seem to lose this entry periodically.(I'm adding this via the dotted quads/wiki "page")

Mark

Ongoing status reports

Moved to PGV Wiki:Community Portal.

Logo

Laurie, I think the logo needs a relative URL, because visiting the site right now via the IP address, it isn't displaying for me. Tom Haws 06:12, 22 November 2005 (EST)

Punch list

I finally got through! Here's that punch list that's been on my mind. Tom Haws 04:26, 23 November 2005 (EST)

Outward, not inward

See if you agree with Look outward, not inward.

Namespaces

See if you agree with Namespaces.

Wiki tech doc examples

I wondered as I lay in bed last night whether there was any chance for success as a documentation wiki. So I want to ask and find if there is anybody who knows of even one example of a successful documentation/tech support wiki. I would like to examine it and follow its guiding principles. Documentation/tech support is a little different than an encyclopedia, and I want to increase our chances for success.

Tom

I still don't have any privileges, and e-mail notification isn't working at all for me. Tom Haws 05:01, 23 November 2005 (EST)

Interlanguage link

Laurie, I left an example of an interlanguage link at Genealogy:Introduction to. Look at the source and the right side bart there and let me know if that makes sense. Tom Haws 07:53, 23 November 2005 (EST)

image links

phpgedview.png or Phpgedview.png ... the first seems to appear in the current links, but the second version produces an image on the page. Maybe rename the image wherever it is rather than edit the link on each page. Dxradio 02:36, 24 November 2005 (EST)

Duplication

Let's discuss at Talk:Main Page. Also, we need to define a discussion place for these startup topics. Wikipedia has a Wikipedia:Village Pump that probably worked really well when Wikipedia was small. Anyway, there needs to be a talk page where we can check in to see the discussion on these matters. By the way, it's lunch time and I am at work and I got in!!! Tom Haws 06:31, 24 November 2005 (EST)

Community portal

I copied the Wikipedia PGV Wiki:Community Portal template for us to use for PGVWiki oriented work coordination and discussion. There is a to-do list there where I am putting some items I can't personally resolve. Maybe we could all check in on that page regularly unless there is a better idea. Tom Haws 07:09, 24 November 2005 (EST)

Let's keep it simple and start discussing all the startup stuff at the default sidebar link PGV Wiki:Community Portal. See you there? Tom Haws 07:39, 24 November 2005 (EST)

PGV Wiki or PGVWiki?

I have been assuming and using PGVWiki as a namespace. But I see that the PGV Wiki:Community Portal is in the PGV Wiki (with a space) namespace? Is there an advantage of one over the other? Is it worth talking about, or should I just change all PGVWiki to PGV Wiki? What will the official name be? Tom Haws 07:09, 24 November 2005 (EST)

Version treatment

What do you think of my ideas for a version treamtent convention? Tom Haws 14:20, 27 November 2005 (EST)

I put a version treatment proposal at at PGVWiki:Community Portal#Version treatment. Tom Haws 14:20, 27 November 2005 (EST)

Edit conflicts

Conflicts are pretty common at Wikipedia too. It's not a big deal unless you are moving pages and stuff. One way to avoid them is to edit sections instead of pages if the page is really busy. I had thought we might keep things simple at the community portal by sticking to the one page for now (so none of us misses anything). But we can link to the discussion page. That's fine. Whatever works best for all and is easy to follow. Tom Haws 15:54, 24 November 2005 (EST) PGVWiki:Purpose and Design

Multi-language

Still a multi-language problem. See PGVWiki:Projects#Multi Language Support. Tom Haws 07:18, 1 December 2005 (EST)

I'm reading. Thoughts below as I go:

• Interlanguage linking seems to be conceived in Mediawiki as a special type of Wikipedia:InterWiki [1] linking. (The preceding red link is a failed interwiki link that wrongly assumes the presence of an interwiki map at PGVWiki.)
• As you have pointed out, we seem to be missing a way for the PGVWiki system to know that when we go to a French article we are now in the French PGV Wiki. I have a hunch that we may find the only way to overcome this is to run the various languages as separate Mediawiki projects. You have surmised that running the languages as various subfolders avoids having to keep multiple logins, and may simplify the issue. But we are not seeing any indication yet that your vision is able to be implemented. What would it take to run each language as a separate project? What does that mean fully?
• This link [2] explains (I think) how language links are special.
• The links at http://fr.wiki.phpgedview.net/index.php/Special:Allmessages still link to, for example, http://fr.wiki.phpgedview.net/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Monobook.js/en EN? Yes. The French Special:Allmessages links to a /en message file. Go figure. All the languages seem to be using the same Allmessages file. Could this be because English isn't defined as a language?
• URLs don't seem consistent. Sometime you get this http://wiki.phpgedview.net/index.php?title=Main_Page vs. this

http://nl.wiki.phpgedview.net/index.php/Hoofdpagina Some are "pretty" and others aren't. And I don't think you ever get this http://en.wiki.phpgedview.net/index.php/Main_Page

• The various languages don't seem self-contained. Something is still not right. For example, my current url to this page is http://nl.wiki.phpgedview.net/index.php?title=User_talk:Laurie. Go figure. And if you link to Main Page from fr, you get the English Main Page. Sigh. Ahh. Maybe they have to be pointed to different databases. Hmm. Separate interlanguage interwiki projects. Sounds familiar from my reading.
• Found this quote "hi, i searched the web on how to set up mediawiki multilanguage site. but the only thing i could find was "use a dedicated database scheme per language"." [3]
• Found this quote "The way the Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc) do it is [I think, approximately] by installing a seperate database for each one, and a seperate LocalSettings.php, but then including a CommonSettings.php (for things which should be the same for all languages) and one central copy of the actual MediaWiki PHP files. I'm not sure if they use symlinks or PHP includes or what for this, but that's the basic idea. Then, of course, you set up the interwiki tables in each database to let you do inter-language links like /" [4]
• And to get the Wiki to actually speak each language once we get the interwiki bugs ironed out, there is this http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_localization.
• I think at the vanilla wiki.phpgedview.net it makes sense to have a language index like this http://wikipedia.org/
• User:Yalnifj should point phpGedView to xx.wiki.phpGedView.net

phpGedView / CMS "How to" Article

Dear Laurie,

I have finished getting Joomla! and phpGedView integrated on my site, and have gotten a good start on dealing with the backlog of offline content, and getting stuff moved out of phpGedView that didn't really belong there, but I had no other place to put it.

So, I decided to do a first draft of a "how to" article, and came here for that purpose.

I quickly realized I was not well enough prepared, and that this article is going to be lengthier than I anticipated. I think I better draft it offline, and then figure out how to upload and tweak it here.

Some additional considerations:

1. A "How To" article could end up promoting CMS for phpGedView users for whom it is ill suited, absent treatment of the pro's and con's of CMS, especially as they relate to genealogy sites in general, and PGV in particular. Starting my article with a "to CMS or not to CMS" section bloats it, and would require those who have already made up their minds to scroll through a lot of text to get to the nuts and bolts. It seems a separate "Do I Need/Want a CMS" article would be better, but does not fit into the "How To" Category structure you have set up.

2. My experience and expertise is limited almost exclusively to Joomla!/Mambo. Some of what I have learned by implementing this would apply to any CMS. While "shopping" for a CMS, I also found some whose specifications are completely incompatible with a PGV installation. Other info is specific to integrating Joomla! with PGV. If I write an article entitled "How to Integrate phpGedView with a CMS," there are going to be gaps for those who pick one of the Nukes, or something else. But, if I write one entitled "How to Integrate phpGedview with Joomla!" it sets a precedent which, if followed, could end up filling your how-to category with articles on third-party packages, crowding out and obscuring those which have a wider application to the PGV community. Perhaps it would make sense for me to put the information which applies to all CMS's in one article, and the Joomla!-specific stuff in another, which could be linked to the first.

Anyway, it will probably be the weekend before I have time again to do the writing, so let me know your thoughts, and I will proceed accordingly. I'll check back here before going beyond composing some notes, or you can e-mail me: jmg[at]gilhousenfamily[dot]com

J-M +

With indulgence I'm butting in here. 1. Feel free to write what you can and leave your article incomplete. Perhaps you can add {{stub}} to highlight the article as incomplete. 2. Consider writing several shorter articles all linked together. After all, PGVWiki is a work in progress. Tom Haws 10:28, 15 December 2005 (EST)

Documentation wiki example

Here's a great and active documentation wiki for Knoppix using Mediawiki http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Main_Page Tom Haws 10:30, 15 December 2005 (EST)

Help request for my account

Laurie, if you have time to help me, I am still getting a "You have new messages" prompt that never goes away. And I never get any e-mails from the system. Is there anything you can do from your end? By the way, site looks good and is slowly revving up. Tom Haws 15:16, 10 January 2006 (EST)

I think it's fixed now. Thanks. Tom Haws 15:20, 12 January 2006 (EST)

---

Hi Laurie, hi Tom,

last night, I writed a plain tutorial http://wiki.phpgedview.net/en/index.php/How_To#Tutorials with 2 menu-points. I was pritty glad with the success of my hard work!

This morning I would "split" one point in 2...
So I writed a new menue-point and changed the name of the old.
But now, the whole content of the old one seems to be disappered.

The name of the old point was:
"build a new menu (customize themes)"

Are you able to "rescue" (reinstall) the content behind?
I can sse the old content under: http://wiki.phpgedview.net/en/index.php/Build_a_new_menu_%28customize_themes%29
which ist the version from 01:36, 7 April 2006

Thanks for help! Markus

markus, The last version saved was at 12.36 which is the old content you talk about. I can find no version saved after that. sorry. If you register I can leave a message in your talk area.

Laurie

I'm happy: all is ok now. Markus

I have also a formatting question:

When I write a code-block (by useing the leading blanc), I have problems to display html-tags inside the code (I would like to see the tags written (not executed)).

How do I do this?

Markus - look at the edit of this section start it with"< pre >" and finish with "< / pre >. Obviously the spaces get removed from the html.

 :<br>

Laurie

thanks, works perfect. How can I do it in the text? including a HTML-tag without executing? Markus

Use the < nowiki > command to turn on off this is the test <br> <pre> and this is the end.

If you are having some problems with formatting go to the help section and it will take you to some good documents.

Laurie

Yes, the wiki-peoples have done a good job. the help-section was helping a lot. Thanks, Markus

---

If you can copy the menu-structure of pgv-wiki-en to the German page, I could do some translations...
Markus

---

Hi Laurie,

I was looking to your mailaccount - but didn't found...

I would make a colored word in

this-is-normal, this-is-red, this-is-green

How can I do this?

Also I did not understand, how I make a internal link from one Wiki-page to another.

And how would it work when I would like to change the line-hight? (see Gedcom manually)

Thanks, Markus

PGV bug related to PGVWiki

I filed this bug report for PGV, Laurie. Tom Haws (Talk) 07:03, 25 February 2006 (EST)

The Main Help menu links to

Wiki Wiki User's Guide Wiki Administrator's Guide

The latter two links are broken and are inappropriate for the current PGVWiki setup.

The way PGVWiki is set up for the foreseeable future, there is a single main page that references all the languages. It is at http://wiki.phpgedview.net. Until the decision is made to set up the wiki for all supported PGV languages (a feature available and active at the Wiki, but not implemented), the only meaningful link from PGV to the wiki is this single, language-neutral link. http://wiki.phpgedview.net

Please remove the second and third links.

Tom Haws

Just a test

http://rodovid.org/

Dear Laurie & Tom and everybody to whom it may concern :),

sorry for like spam introduction, but I don't know how names this comment. For last year and more I was interesting to create managable tree of my relatives. I forgot, but it will be not so wrong to say that phpGedView was one of the first engine that I found for my desires :). From this I get first knowleage about gedcom, different types of trees etc. But big disadvantage of pgv is a super wide tree for many generations ((( So I create at first tree builder. At august I decide make free global wiki tree :) And starts http://rodovid.org . Over some time I add initial gedcom import engine. And couple days ago I recode it to useable variant. Below I add some examples:

1. all known ancetors of my childs - http://en.rodovid.org/wk/Special:Tree/29 (all of them in ukrainian but understandable, i hope)
2. not bad large and with compact view tree in test db - http://engine.rodovid.org/wk/Special:Tree/3365
3. 32 generations of ansectors into db for tests - http://engine.rodovid.org/wk/Special:Tree/5392
4. 275 descendants of Edward III Plantagenet (imported from roal.ged without clan values - so it is mostly grey (:, also into test db ) - http://engine.rodovid.org/wk/Special:Tree/905
5. Balbo Baggins's descendants - http://engine.rodovid.org/wk/Special:Tree/1314

So I propose to merge our efforts, my online compact wiki tree and pgv offline gedcom processor. We can make links from each to other at beginning, and in future use a PGV as special browser throw rodovid... I think we can find many points of contact.

I'll be very appriciate to you for your comments and critisism. Sincerely, --Yaroslav aka Baya 02:31, 23 March 2006 (EST) Sorry for my poor english.

MediaWiki features in Wikipedia but not here

I wonder why Mediawiki here doesn't show dates (2006-04-14) correctly and why the footnotes ^[5] at wikipedia aren't available.

1. ^ 

Updating readme.txt

G'day Laurie

As you have probably noted, I've been helping Im with some Wiki editing - and then decided to try some for myself. I thought that something small would be a good place to start, so readme.txt seemed a straight-forward item!

I have a web space for it at the moment (http://members.optusnet.com.au/pblair30/), but would like to put it to PGVwiki. As it is a work in progress (I can see extra things it needs) it probably doesn't quite fit the present headings. What would you think? It needs to be plainly WIP.

Anyway, could I ask you to figure a space for me, and let me know how you want me to handle it? Then I can post it + graphics...

Regards

Paul Blair Canberra pblair30@optusnet.com.au

All quiet?

Laurie:

Are you there? Be pleased to hear that you are! :-) Have material to post on wiki...

Paul pblair30@optusnet.com.au