[Coco] the future of the NitrOS-9 wiki

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 07 May 2016 06:31:01 Tormod Volden wrote:

> -- because better documentation is the only way to save NitrOS-9 and
> the OS-9 legacy from dying out --
>
> MediaWiki vs Markdown (Allura)
>
> The NitrOS-9 wiki was originally written in a MediaWiki format (same
> as used on wikipedia.org), and this was a built-in (as "hosted app")
> wiki engine at SourceForge until June 2014. At this point SourceForge
> moved the built-in wiki infrastructure to their Allura platform, which
> uses a Markdown format (also very popular these days). In the process
> they converted all project wikis to the new format, with various luck.
> Many may have noticed that the current NitrOS-9 wiki lacks some images
> and some tables look odd.
>
> Prior to this, they were documenting how to port a project wiki from
> the built-in wiki engine to a MediaWiki engine that the project can
> run on its own (SourceForge provides mysql data base instances and
> everything needed). Meanwhile this documentation seems to have
> disappeared, but I found it [1] through the Internet Archive. They
> also kept backups of the old MediaWiki content.
>
> This week I finally got to try out this MediaWiki setup and recovered
> the old NitrOS-9 wiki from the backups. The result can be seen at
> http://nitros9.sourceforge.net/wiki/
>
> Note that it misses a few changes that have been done last year on the
> official, converted wiki at https://sourceforge.net/p/nitros9/wiki/
>
> (Also, the logo was just something I quickly sketched together. Is
> there a proper NitrOS-9 logo?)

The red, enlarged text I saw on one page but not the other, seems like a 
good default, but I might size it up another 25-50 percent & move it to 
top center of each page.  I don't recall if anyone ever created a 
different one.  Mark, at Cloud-9 for his printed materials and web site, 
if you could use it of course, might contain something.

> So this gives us the following choice:
>
> 1. Continue using the official, converted wiki in Markdown format
> todo: we should fix up images and tables
> advantages:
> - Standard and supported at SourceForge
> - Uses normal SourceForge accounts
> - No administration needed
>
> or
>
> 2. Use the rescued MediaWiki
> todo: we must incorporate last year's few fixes
> advantages:
> - Much more features, e.g. RecentChanges and other SpecialPages
> - Looks much better in my opinion
> - MediaWiki is well maintained as standard on wikipedia etc

I have a preference for the MediaWiki format, but its very slight. In any 
event, a front page link to the ChangeLog, in either format,  would be 
nice. Note I am not refering to the pages ChangeLog, but to the Nitros9 
ChangeLog.

> When it comes to speed and performance I am not sure, they are both a
> bit slow and it varies a lot, probably depending on cache and server
> load. I have not enabled caching on MediaWiki AFAIK.
>
Either seems adequate to me, I clicked on the link posted, clicked on the 
pager to select the window firefox was running on, and it was loaded in 
that approximately 1 second.  Firefox was already running.
 
> The above advantages on each side seems pretty minor to me. It is more
> a question of what would contributors like to work with!
>
> Voicing your opinion in this thread does not automatically mean you
> are taking on responsibility :) Though of course your voice will carry
> more weight if you are already working on the wiki, or have good
> intentions to do so.

Which is good for me, my failing back has me pretty well incapacitated.  
And I don't think well when I am in pain, or full of gabapentin for the 
pain.

> Best regards,
> Tormod
>
> PS. Aaron, this might be a question for the DriveWire4 wiki as well. I
> can do the MediaWiki setup there also if you like.
>
> [1]
> https://web.archive.org/web/20151008101534/http://sourceforge.net/p/fo
>rge/community-docs/Migrating%20MediaWiki%20from%20Hosted%20Apps/

Thanks Tormod, for all of your efforts in this.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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