Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@g.o>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Handbooks moving to the wiki
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 20:31:18
Message-Id: 20141214233107.d7bded7e374720bb7019eb05@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Handbooks moving to the wiki by malc
1 On Sun, 14 Dec 2014 19:46:27 +0000 malc wrote:
2 > What about simple transclusion? [1] Example of first few handbook-chapters
3 > at [2]
4
5 Looks quite readable in elinks.
6
7 > It's not pretty (the top TOC works, but the inline-toc on the
8 > right-hand-side doesn't work) That could be prevented with some <noinclude>
9 > directives on the source pages but I didn't want to trample over Sven.
10 > Would that work? (And yes - a few other includes are broken because this is
11 > rooted in my user-space and not under the handbook, but I think these
12 > should work if a page of this type was included in the Handbook namespace.)
13
14 Well, it doesn't have to be perfect, it should be usable enough.
15 Looks like transclusion solves usability problem :)
16
17 > Cheers,
18 > malc.
19 >
20 > [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Transclusion
21 > [2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Mlashley
22 >
23 > On Sun, Dec 14, 2014 at 3:19 PM, Andrew Savchenko <bircoph@g.o>
24 > wrote:
25 >
26 > > On Sun, 14 Dec 2014 10:02:36 -0500 Jeff Horelick wrote:
27 > > > > > In such cases I would recommend a Live USB (or CD/DVD) that has a
28 > > > > > graphical environment, so that the user can keep a modern web browser
29 > > > > > next to a terminal window, to ease installation. In that case the
30 > > wiki
31 > > > > > is perfectly usable.
32 > > > >
33 > > > > No, this is not a solution, because on particular hardware live
34 > > > > media (live usb/cd/dvd/whatever) may fail with video or gui support.
35 > > > >
36 > > > > I had such problem this year, when I had to install Gentoo from
37 > > > > LiveCD without ability to use any other host for support (reading
38 > > > > howtos, googling and so on). I used SystemRescueCD because of ample
39 > > > > set of debug, admin and analysis tools I needed to configure
40 > > > > system properly, but GUI was just a failure due to lack of nvidia
41 > > > > drivers out of the box. Of course, I can easily fix such issues
42 > > > > when fresh system is installed, but while it was being installed I
43 > > > > had to use what is available from the live media. And elinks was a
44 > > > > great help back there.
45 > > > >
46 > > > > So it will be really nice to keep handbook copies outside of wiki
47 > > > > interface. Probably a reasonable compromise will be to keep
48 > > > > handbooks at the wiki, but to use some script to generate simpler
49 > > > > htmls for out of the wiki usage scope.
50 > > > >
51 > > > > Best regards,
52 > > > > Andrew Savchenko
53 > > > >
54 > > >
55 > > >
56 > > > I feel like we do not need to optimize for this case really. I feel that
57 > > > the odds of installing Gentoo where you have no GUI (via either the
58 > > LiveDVD
59 > > > or SystemRescueCD), no smartphone to use to look at the wiki, no tablet
60 > > to
61 > > > use to look at the wiki (I'm not sure about elsewhere, but here in the
62 > > US,
63 > > > you can get a brand-new Android tablet for $40 USD at a physical store
64 > > > (less online) and in the UK you can find them under 50GBP), no spare
65 > > > computers to use to look at the wiki are extremely unlikely.
66 > >
67 > > This case was really simple: use of any electronic devices aside
68 > > from PC in question was prohibited due to company's security
69 > > policies. In fact this is quite common case when we're talking
70 > > about business setups and not private workstations.
71 > >
72 > > Also I'd like to note that smartphone is not solution for people
73 > > without perfect eyesight (e.g. me): reading too much text from small
74 > > screen is either painful (with small fonts) or inconvenient (with
75 > > large ones).
76 > >
77 > > Please note I'm not saying "do not put handbooks in wiki" — this
78 > > is really a good idea to have all docs in one place; I'm talking
79 > > about some backup solution for such cases, like simple generated
80 > > htmls.
81 > >
82 > > Best regards,
83 > > Andrew Savchenko
84 > >
85
86
87 Best regards,
88 Andrew Savchenko

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-project] Gentoo Handbooks moving to the wiki Sven Vermeulen <swift@g.o>