aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/doc/todo/basewiki_should_be_self_documenting.mdwn
blob: d467f2f0bd5f0ed277f8a79d43d5c194bf39ab6f (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
The pages in the basewiki should be fully self-documenting as far as what
users need to know to edit pages in the wiki. [[HelpOnFormatting]]
documents the basics, but doesn't include every preprocessor directive.

Note that there's a disctinction between being self-documenting for users,
and being complete documentation for ikiwiki. The basewiki is _not_
intended to be the latter, so it lacks the usage page, all the plugin
pages, etc.

I've made some progress toward making the basewiki self-documenting by moving
the docs about using templates, shortcuts, and blogs from the plugin pages, 
onto the pages in the basewiki.

Here are some of the things that are not documented in full in the
basewiki:

	joey@kodama:~/src/ikiwiki/doc/plugins>grep usage *
	aggregate.mdwn:## usage
	graphviz.mdwn:page.  Example usage:
	graphviz.mdwn:amounts of processing time and disk usage.
	img.mdwn:## usage
	linkmap.mdwn:set of pages in the wiki. Example usage:
	map.mdwn:This plugin generates a hierarchical page map for the wiki. Example usage:
	postsparkline.mdwn:# usage
	sparkline.mdwn:# usage
	sparkline.mdwn:more detail in [its wiki](http://sparkline.wikispaces.com/usage).
	table.mdwn:## usage

Meta is another one.

The holdup on documenting these in full in the basewiki is that I'm not sure
where to put the docs. [[HelpOnFormatting]] should stay as simple as possible
and just give examples, not full lists of availavle parameters, etc. And
it's bad enough that [[blog]] uses that toplevel namespace, without adding
lots more toplevel pages to the basewiki. ([[blog]] really needs to be moved..
I have several wikis that override it with their actual blog content).

Maybe the thing to do would be to make a meta/ or usage/ or wiki/ or something
directory in the basewiki, and put new pages documenting how to use preprocesor
directives in there.

Actually, if we look at the basewiki contents:

	blog.mdwn@              pagespec.mdwn@               subpage@
	favicon.ico@            preprocessordirective.mdwn@  subpage.mdwn@
	helponformatting.mdwn@  sandbox.mdwn@                templates/
	index.mdwn@             shortcuts.mdwn@              templates.mdwn@
	local.css@              smileys@                     wikiicons@
	markdown.mdwn@          smileys.mdwn@                wikilink.mdwn@
	openid.mdwn@            style.css@

Most of this is meta stuff. Only index.mdwn, local.css, favicon.ico,
smileys, wikiicons, shortcuts, and templates are really content/configs that
are used as the base of a wiki. The rest is documentation.

Moving a lot of these pages could be hard though.. Lots of wikis probably
link to them. Maybe the directory they're moved to could be in the search
path, like the userdir is, so that simple links keep working.

See also: [[Conditional_Underlay_Files]]