User-submitted tutorials / How-To's

[gumby]

I'm thinking this section on the Tutorials page needs some love.  Looks like it's chronological, but I'm thinking it either needs categorization or alphabetizing or both.  What do you guys think?

[Collector]

Ordering them in categories makes the most sense. It might be best laid out on a regular web page with screenshots, etc. where appropriate rather than the forum. It would make it easier to add cross referencing, hot links, definitions and the like. I could take a look at that. If there is not enough space/bandwidth here, I could host it on SHP.

[Cloudee1]

I agree, it's not a long term solution as is. In the beginning, the idea was that the newest ones up top because you've seen all of the old ones bunches of times. So ideally it would be nice to pull out some of the how to's and stick them in with the regular tutorials. I appear to have an afinity for writing long code over the last few days I could just hardcode the link in the tutorials list. I would like to see Brian's first tutorial stay as is, combine the how tos and brian and troflips with a little rewriting to make it flow like the first as far as building a single game. And then obviously a third branch for point and click. But not everything I don't think would need a spot in the tutorials list. I guess too, we need  some sort of standard format... maybe not though.

[Collector]

I have started to work on something from the How Tos from here. I have copied the theme from the boards here to a CSS file. I'll make a single page from each thread, keeping credits for each. They can be linked on an index page and arranged from there. I'll then go through them to see what may be good to cross reference and add any appropriate extras. When I get enough to show, I'll upload it to the SHP sever so you can see it and give feed back.

PS, If you would rather I not do it, let me know before I get too far into it.

[Cloudee1]

So what happens to the how to threads after they've been converted for tutorial page. presumebly we wouldn't need them, but it would suck to drop them because right now they can be found with a forum search. Also we lose the immediate ability to update the tutorials. for instance if Brandon figures out how to automatically parse for synonyms as part of a complex noun string so instead of just adding a new post, he would need to start a new thread which would then need to be added to tutorial. I'm afraid once we start handling them by hand we may have to handle them alot. a solution that works with smf would be better I think than seperating them. but then again, I'm not positive I have what you're talking about pictured correctly so I dunno...

[MusicallyInspired]

Even if the forum how-to's are converted, there should be no reason to remove the forums version. It is handy for conversation.

[Collector]

Yes, leave them. Some may need to ask for clarification or want to contribute further. Perhaps the original post of each thread could be edited to add the URL to the new page and the new page would have a link back to the original thread. That way someone using the static pages could immediately go to the thread if they had a question or wanted to add to it. The main reason to duplicate the threads on a static page is for the extra capabilities that you can do outside of the limitations of the forum software, but keeping the thread too allows for feedback.

[Cloudee1]

Well, really it sounds like we are setting ourselves up for a lot of coding. I am almost convinced that it would be easier to transpose our current html tutorials into the forums, then more people: admins, maybe a scholar membergroup, or whatever,  who could then be able to edit all of the then tutorial posts, new how-to's and converted tutorials adding cross-references and whatnot. I really don't see that being too big of a problem then hardcoding the tutorials list, and then just using the texts of the posts to display, stripping out all of the other "forum stuff"

I think that would be better long term solution. Really we just need a format for everyone to follow or editors can manipulate it to that would make the transition from forum post to webpage content easier..

[Collector]

I have developed a template to match the site, here. At this point I am just copying over the threads into the template before trying to rearrange/edit anything. It should go pretty fast, now that I have a template.

http://sierrahelp.com/SCI/Index.htm

I have the last 6 copied over. I have found a problem. The generic Keypad class thread had the code in an attachment that is missing.

Edit: The CSS and the pages themselves should validate.

[Collector]

A Wiki is another possible solution. I setup a trial Wiki with one of the How Tos entered.  

http://sierrahelp.com/SCI/Wiki/index.php?title=Determining_location_of_mouse_cursor

This was a simple copy and paste. As you can see, it fails to include all of the script inside of the pre tags, but I am not going to invest much time into sorting this out if no one wants to go this route. It would make for an easier collaborative effort and easy editing.

Edit, By placing a space before the leading code line and the final closing parenthesis the Wiki included all of the code.

[MusicallyInspired]

A Wiki. That's perfect. That's what we need here.

[Collector]

The solution to the code is that the Wiki accepts the HTML pre tags, but is not in the tool bar. I am plugging in the How tos now. Should we salvage the old Free SCI info, too?

[Collector]

I have all of the How tos entered

http://sierrahelp.com/SCI/Wiki/index.php?title=How_To

[gumby]

Should we salvage the old Free SCI info, too?

I vote yes.   I know that I refer to it regularly.  Its got great technical information on it.

[Collector]

I don't know what Cloudee has in mind, but I believe that the resources here are somewhat limited. I don't mind hosting the Wiki. I don't want to step on any toes, but if this is alright with him, others can start to contribute. Gumby, you might be more familiar with what is on SCI info that should be salvaged and what is good info for development. Feel free to add anything you think should be there.