[Fhsst-bio] Riaan's reply

[Mark Horner]

Hi all

Here is some help from Riaan (the guy the Shuttleworth Foundation have 
as a contractor for all Wiki stuff - he is the one who put our physics 
book on WikiBooks).


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Fhsst-bio] Strategy for Biology
Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 20:46:55 +0200
From: Riaan Bredenkamp <address@hidden>
Reply-To: address@hidden
Organization: private
To: address@hidden, Mark Horner <address@hidden>
References: <address@hidden>	 
<address@hidden>

On Mon, 2005-05-02 at 10:14 -0700, Mark Horner wrote:
> Hi Riaan
>
> Could you please help answer Nicole's questions about the contents and 
> pages below?
Sure!

> Graeme & Nicole wrote:
> > Hi Team
> > 
> > OK - I've made a start, and reorganised a few of the pages. I've added basic
> > titles where I think things should go, but haven't yet created all of the
> > page links. The main reason for this, is that we need a template that gives
> > us a 'back' button and a link to the section index and the contents page and
> > the front page. I've been adding things manually, which is EXHAUSTING!

Unfortunately there is no automated way of creating templates - or I
have not found it yet.
> >
> > Since I don't know how to create the template (I can't make head or tail of
> > Wiki's information page on templates as they don't give examples that are
> > comparable) I'm a bit stuck. I know the Physics book has a nice table at the
> > top of each page giving those links, but I can't figure out how to copy and
> > adapt it either. My hubbie is a coding whizz, so I might get some time with
> > him later tonight to figure it out. However, in this midst of all this -
> > Wiki crashed!
The first step is to create Template's URL, an example of one is:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Template:FHSST_Biology_Example

This will open a blank page, edit it to create the template.
A template is just a piece of formatted text that you can insert intoo a
wiki-page by using the following code: {{Template Name}}, in this case
it would be {{FHSST Biology Example}}

Lets use {{FHSST_Physics_Coll}} as an example, the template is:

<br clear=all>

{| id="toc" style="margin: 0 2em 0 2em;"
|-
| style="background:#ccccff" align="center" | The Free High School
Science Texts: '''A Textbook for High School Students Studying
Physics.'''
|-
| style="font-size: 90%;" | [[FHSST_Physics|Main Page]] -
[[FHSST_Physics_Work_Energy:Work_and_Energy| << Previous Chapter (Work
and Energy)]] -
[[FHSST_Physics_Newtonian_Gravitation:Newtonian_Gravitation| Next
Chapter (Newtonian Gravitation) >>]]
<center>'''Collisions and Explosions'''</center>
[[FHSST_Physics_Collisions_Explosions:Collisions and Explosions|
Collisions and Explosions]] -
[[FHSST_Physics_Collisions_Explosions:Essay_Two|Essay 2: Tiny, Violent
Collisions]] -  [[FHSST_Physics_Collisions_Explosions:Types of
Collisions|Types of Collisions]] -
[[FHSST_Physics_Collisions_Explosions:Explosions|Explosions]] -
[[FHSST_Physics_Collisions_Explosions:Energy and Heat|Explosions: Energy
and Heat]] -  [[FHSST_Physics_Collisions_Explosions:Important Equations
and Quantities|Important Equations and Quantities]]
|}


I suggest you use the same format, just remove the Physics specific
sections, in which will eave you with:

<br clear=all>

{| id="toc" style="margin: 0 2em 0 2em;"
|-
| style="background:#ccccff" align="center" | The Free High School
Science Texts: '''A Textbook for High School Students Studying
Biology.''' <This is the heading of the table which forms the template>
|- <This starts the next line of the table - a Pipe character followed
by a dash i.e. ``|-''>
| style="font-size: 90%;" | <From this point on you insert links to the
pages in the specific chapter of Biology>
|}

I start with the links to the main page, previous chapter and next
chapter, followed by the name of the chapter, and then followed by the
specific links to the pages that form the contents of the chapter.

to create a link to a page use double square brackets:
[[FHSST_Biology_Cells:Cell_structure| <text after the pipe is displayed
to the person looking at the page, if it is not inserted the person will
see ``FHSST_Biology_Cells:Cell_structure'' instead of Cell Structure>
Note that you do not have to use the _ sign in the plain text name or
the wiki-URL, it is just better to use it in the wiki-recognisable name
(what I cal the wiki_URL)]]

So the above entry would be:
[[FHSST_Biology_Cells:Cell_structure|Cell structure]]

You may wonder why use FHSST_Biology_Cells:Cell_structure instead of
FHSST_Biology:Cell_structure to create the wiki-URL, it creates more
work and perhaps an uglier URL but it helps distinguish chapters, in
Physics each chapter has a heading called ``Important Equations and
Quantities|Important Equations and Quantities''  which would clash with
other wiki-URL's if all chapters were simply FHSST_Physics:NAME_OF_PAGE.

So the basic structure of the Physics templates are:

{| id="toc" style="margin: 0 2em 0 2em;"
|-
| style="background:#ccccff" align="center" | <Heading of the table>
|-  <Move to next row of table>
| style="font-size: 90%;" | <Contents of the next line in the table, By
using the <center>CHAPTER NAME</center> line, you split the navigation
line and the contents of the chapter lines from each other, in reality
they are all in the same row of the table.>
|}

``style="font-size: 90%;"'' is just to decrease the size of the links
inside the template, else it gets big and unpleasant.

So, the example template I created looks like this:

<br clear=all>

{| id="toc" style="margin: 0 2em 0 2em;"
|-
| style="background:#ccccff" align="center" | The Free High School
Science Texts: '''A Textbook for High School Students Studying
Biology.'''
|-
| style="font-size: 90%;" | [[FHSST_Biology|Main Page]] -
[[FHSST_Biology_TCMS_Indigenous:Start|Next Chapter (Indigenous knowledge
systems and biotechnology) >>]]
<center>'''Cells and genetics'''</center>
[[FHSST_Biology_TCMS_Cells:Cell_structure|Cell structure]] -
[[FHSST_Biology_TCMS_Cells:Micro_Org|Micro-organism structure]] -
[[FHSST_Biology_TCMS_Cells:Tissues_Organs|Tissues and organs]] - etc.
etc.
|}

I have just had a look at Mark's talk page, Karl ( a wikipedian) has
left a note on how wikibooks wants to standardise the way books are
organised. Seems to be convenient. I will play with it a bit to see if
it would make navigation links helpful or even unnecessary ! (Though I
stil like some kind of visual guide to see where you are in the
material. See:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seven_Habits_Study_Guide
and
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User_talk:Marknewlyn

Ok, If I did not make much sense, please ask for clarification. Its the
end of the long weekend afterall!

Kind regards
Riaan

PS: Interesting links:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Naming_conventions

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Staff_lounge

and:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Manual_of_Style



> > Anyway, have a look, and see what you think you can add/ change.
> > Thanks
> > Nicole



--
--
Mark Horner 

Jabber/AIM/Yahoo:   marknewlyn 


Co-author:
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst

"Life is but a seg-fault away ...

Life received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x42074d40 in calloc () from /lib/i686/liblife.so.6"