Recent job on the Wiki...

MacDeath · 23:22, 17 December 10

Okay guys...
I spent the past 2 days on the wiki doing boring job.

I just hope it wasn't useless...

Actually I spent a lot of this time on the Pages with no Category...

As I told you, browsing with help of the categories can be kool.

What I tried :
Get "mother categories" : those are the uncategorised categories...(pew...)

Those are for the moment :

1: supposed to be Media content oriented : books, pictures, Type ins perhaps, and so on...

2: as it says, quite similar to "13" exept 13 is also in case it could just need a re-name.

3 : didn't looked at thoses yet.

4: CPC history : the peeples, the events, all Amstrad stuff...

5: Because this machine is great and specific.

6 : CPCtech stuffs , as I yet don't know where to put them all...
If you see some of them not in this category, please add them in too.

7: don't know if this is relevant category, should perhaps be a subcategory of others...(like non CPC computers, Programing, Emulator and so on...

8 : Definition : I don't see the use of this at the moment, it has quite few stuffs indeed... where should we put this ? or what should we add into this ?

9 : this one is right as a mother-category.

10: Hardware : this one has a lot of stuff I have to clean it... the peripheral subcategory is more suitable to house all those specific pages, yet of course a few pages are to remains with this category. for the rest, it should only serve as a general browsing stuff... I will try to do that on of these days...

11 : the "off topic" machines actually... Yeah I put the clones and the PLUS too, because why not... those are not exactly "Amstrad CPC" and thois category has not that much stuff.

12 : PD library : I suppose this is public Domain ? I don't really know how does it Work nor what it is... this should find a place at "Amstrad CPC Media" and other stuffs...

13 : as said at "2" : to delete or rename. Would be great if someone able to delete page check these categories sometimes...

14 : Software is a generic aspect with all the coding, programmings, applications and languages and so on. It is quite well sorted for the moment...

15 :stub : because it may be needed...

16 : I found a few pages with no other purpose than to discuss about the Wiki...
I think it dates back from the day the Wiki had no Forum perhaps...
So I created this category for utility purpose...
This may be quite similar to "3" (templates categories) and I think "3" should be a subcategory of the category:Wiki...

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Category:External_link_templates

What's that ? why so many games inside this category ? This may need a clean up or was it on purpose ?

redbox · 11:04, 18 December 10

Looking really good, great job MacDeath.

Only one thing (and it sounds a bit pedantic maybe) but the Plus is not the 'CPC Plus'... this is what it's commonly referred to, but they are just the Amstrad (464 or 6128) Plus. Should we try and keep this consistent?

I did it with the Plus Demos as I was try to re-organise a little, such as linking to the category rather than having a bit list on the root Plus page.

MacDeath · 12:21, 18 December 10

I know I knwo...
Should be "Amstrad Plus" instead...

Well the "CPC Plus" category already existed... I didn't created it as far as I remember...

And it's a real pain in the ass to change the name of a category or even page... when it already has a lot of "links".

You have te recreate the page/category, and relink manually every stuff....

This can really be quite a hard process, I did it and getting more than 500 stuff to change is somewhat....

So I'm gonna calm it a bit...

But if some tool exist to do it with only one click I would be quite happy to oblige...

The only thing I'll ask : check the existing categories and use them wisely...

redbox · 14:52, 18 December 10

Quote from: MacDeath on 12:21, 18 December 10
And it's a real pain in the ass to change the name of a category or even page... when it already has a lot of "links".

Maybe Gryzor can do this?

Phi2x · 18:07, 18 December 10

.

AMSDOS · 01:12, 19 December 10

Can I thank the people who are doing their best in making the Wiki for what it is.

Unfortunately, I had some thoughts about the current Programming section. When I click on Programming on the Left Hand Side, I get:

-> Source Codes
Redirected from Programming

* Programming software
* BIOS Functions
* Technical documentations
* Locomotive BASIC
* Type Ins

and then follows contents and a whole heap of Assembly routines.

I was just wondering if this could be improved. Unfortunately I'm not very good at this Wiki language and if I do do something, I generally get Grilled for it unless it's some discussion I dribble on about in the Discussion page.

Assembly is obviously the best language on the CPC, and the page itself is a useful tool in itself for people looking for Assembly routines and examples, and I guess other languages may get a similar kind of page if it warrants it.

What I find confusing is how you click programming and it takes you to this Source Code page, it's perhaps me nit-picking cause one can easily Click on Programming Software and you get all the different Languages that way and the Source Code page comes up because it's the only Item in the Programming Section and anyone would see that when you click on Programming. Perhaps Programming Software could go into the Programming Section and dive that from Source Code, as well as Locomotive BASIC & Type-ins could be a link within Locomotive BASIC.

What I thought would be good is to somehow connect Language Articles from Magazines and put them into their own Language Categories. ACU (or Amstrad CPC464 User) for example ran an early series on Forth, and only yesterday found an article on Pascal in one of their early issues. Assembly would obviously be a strong contender for Articles given it would be span across a wide number of Amstrad Magazines and some tutorials were quite in depth or frequent. Having something like that would certainly assist in linking relevant information to relevant sections. My only concern is some of these articles have got bugs in their programs, which is what I found in an early Amstrad CPC464 User Assembly tutorial with the program in it, otherwise I'm probably not using it properly.

MacDeath · 04:44, 19 December 10

I don't know how to modify the left browsing column...

buit yeah this could be improved...

Programing should lead to programing category perhap, the page you talk about is more "codes and routines" oriented ... more specific...

Peoples who need to get to this page actually know what they are looking for.

Also as I said, "redirecting" is not a proper process...

It creates useless entry, which are just remnent of errors from the past ...

you can "cheat" with the links and the displayed stuf like this :

Code Select

[[intercourse|abstinance]]will display "Abstinance" in Blue, but links to "Intercourse" page...

Code Select

[[:category:Stupids|C64 users]]will display a link to "C64 users" page but instead links to "category:Stupids" page...

or whatever... (I love to troll C64...)

If you want to link to a category you must put " : " before and after the word ":category:"

I discovered this quite recently and it is quite usefull actually or else it would simply put the page into said category...

The problem is that it can be confusing or somewhat redundant with Categories pages and Normal pages...

The "Programming" link from the left column is perhaps a bit misleading and should be a bit fixed...

How to fix badly spelled links :
You have a special page called "what link here"...

This show all the page with a link to the page you enter there.

So if you know a badly spelt page exists, instead or using a redirect to a properly spelled copy of it, just create the new correct one (copy/paste may halp...) then check all the previous links to this page and correct them all !

Once it is done, you remove all contents from this page and put it into the "Category : page to delete or whatever" (don't remember the exact terms...)

doing this, the mod can them kill those pages and the CPCwiki then have less empty useless stuffs....

Exemple :
SymbOS is a redirect from Symbos (ouch the upper cases of death...classic).... ok.

Well , there is only one page to have a link to Symbos... easy to correct (I am doing this...don't worry... ok it's done...)

But doing this properly for a good chunk of the CPCwiki can be quite boring and take some time... I Have no more motivation ATM as I already did a good amount of this thing recently...

Next time I'm on an Editing Spree...

So :

Things to do and pages/tools to use :

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Special:ListRedirects
this display all the redirect... there may be a lot to do with this... just use :
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php?title=Special%3AWhatLinksHere&target=&namespace=

(what link here) to check the links for each pages and correct the links.

Another thing to do : Just check the Uncategorized Pages

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Special:UncategorizedPages

and give them at least one category...

After my spree, there are mostly document pages : magazines, books and so on...

This shouldn't be that difficult, just boring...

Sometimes I just don't know what category to put stuff in.

Exemple :

Where should I put those ?

Those pages are too technical for me, is this assembler code ? specification or whatever ?

They could get a bit of comments and explanations IMO.

Because I don't know what it talks about actually... (Well I know a bit what BIOS and I/O are... but I suck at coding so I don't know what those contents are used for...

on the other hand :

Those should be put into the [[Category:Magazines]] which is to include those kind of pages...(and actuallt does...)

There are still 340 pages with no categories...

Most of them are books, Magazines, and a lot of games, companies, Demos or discmags or whatever...

There are also 324 redirects...

some of those would need to correct a lot of links... and be simply discarded after this is done...
But others actually have no link to them.... and could simply be erased...

most of time it's only because or plurial and lower/upper case issues.
The guy who corrected it used a redirect... but redirection is only good if there are link to this page... and its better to correct the links.

blahblahblah...

So be carefull guys : to rename a page is a pain in the Ass.... check what you link when you link...

AMSDOS · 09:29, 19 December 10

Sorry I didn't mean to knit-pick aspects of the Wiki and I understand a lot of sorting out needs to be done to get some sort of order happening with the site. My "Boring" I assume you mean Time Consuming!

The BIOS category would solely relate to Programming, though it doesn't discriminate - by that I mean it doesn't matter what language you use, though in practice one has to use Machine Code or Inline Assembly to be able to use this. If a language doesn't allow this, accessing this becomes tricky to impossible. Within those BIOS sections is BIOS Machine Pack, which relates to RSTs. A number of those RSTs I think relate to the operation of the machine, and users aren't necessarily meant to use them, there is one useful RST - 7 I think??, which can be used in programs. While BIOS is on ROM, the nature of it is to provide a set of routines for people to use in their programs. Some Firmware routines can be accessed in straight BASIC (e.g. CALL &BB18 - KM WAIT KEY, CALL &BC02 - SCR RESET) cause they don't necessarily need values for them to work. Something like &BBDE - GRA SET PEN would need some form of assembly cause the Accumulator would have a value in it prior to calling that to set the GRA PEN. Naturally with some Assembly knowledge and having a BASIC program to poke it into memory and executing it, RSXes can be created to allow access. So it maybe the kind of thing to have in the Assembly area, though I say maybe cause there maybe Languages out there which provide a link to make it accessible from it's code.

CIO on the other hand appears to be more hardware orientated, the closest thing I could see from it which could be relevant in programming is the access of ports to simulate effects like Scrolling, though I don't see anything like that in this bit cause it relates to the CPU and not the Display Chip. The descriptions to be don't really provide any kind of programming insight, simply where they reside and how they can be treated. If it's Programming, it's programming towards the specific Hardware direct, people who do this understand the Hardware, far more technical than your run of the mill programmer!

People who want this should be looking in the Hardware Section!

MacDeath · 17:26, 19 December 10

Then the CIO stuff can at least be in the Electronic components section...

Perhaps the Bios into the internal components then... and get its own subcategory that could be put into programming and Hardware...

Quote"Boring" I assume you mean Time Consuming!

that's it...

Also I wish to add a category to include all game ocntrollers and pointers (mouses, light pens) and to on...

How should I name it ?

Gamecontroller is a bit false as some of those are not "Games only"...

Would the term " Input Device" be accurate enough ?

As there are quite a good amount of pages on Joysticks, Analog port and mouses... or even lightpens...
This may be a good way to make room in the peripherals and Hardware categories...

should this also include the keyboards stuffs

Also a note on naming the categories :

=Try to avoid plurials : of course when you are on the category page there are a lot of entry, but when you are at an individual page, the product/content treat about one thing, which is then (exemple) Aone of theses stuffs...

Exemple :

Joystick speed kind . it is An/one [[Category:Input Device]].

Lower case/Upper cases :
is the Category has more than one word : Upper case for each Words...

=[[Category:Input Device]] : good
=[[Category:Input device]] or [[Category:input device]] : not good

Also check the upper cases for some stuffs...

SumbOS : good
Symbos : not good.

Off course if a few categories are in plurial, this may not be that problematic, always check if there are no existing same stuff but with other upper/lower cases or plurials.

Exemples : Category:Peripherals is plurial... well, it is an old one and has a shitton of stuff in, so lets just keep it that way.

Perhaps :
Wwhen the category is quite generic, includes a complet list of stuff... plurial can be good,

if not, well...

I would like your thinking about this... I mean i'm not a Native English cow.... I'm just a French cow, hence my spanish cow english...

Plurials : how do they f****g work ?

Also Perhaps I should include a "category:Connectic" ? or get it a different name...
This would be some sub-category of internal components, peripherals too, DIY, and Hardware...

peripherals should be the "every things" stuff perhaps ? or should it be reserved for external extensions ?

BTW, i'm starting to clean the Hardware category...
Please tell me if some stuff are done badly... before I spend too much time on this and have then to correct it all.

Another stuff : the robots :
fishertechnics or whatever...

What should be this category named ?
There are not a lot of those, but we must remember a 8 bit computer was supposed to be used in industrial environment, to actually controle mecanical machines, and act as a fancy automaton or automaton interface/terminal...

Yet I don't know how to qualify those fancy toys like the turtle of robotic arms or whatever...

BTW I let them in the peripheral category....

Perhaps a Category:Robotic may fit ?

MacDeath · 23:56, 19 December 10

Okay, I'm done with the Hardware category.... pfew..that was long.

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Category:Hardware

just check the result...

AMSDOS · 01:00, 20 December 10

MacDeath wrote:

Perhaps the Bios into the internal components then... and get its own subcategory that could be put into programming and Hardware...

Yes the whole thing is in a sense Hardware because it exists on a ROM built into the computer. As far as I know it's only there for the user to incorporate the vast amount of routines it supplies which is how the programming comes into effect. In a sense it's not a language on it's own though.

Firmware is a funny thing when it comes to the Wiki cause it seems to pop up in numerous areas, under Software in The Games section Firmware is mention, click on that and it starts raving about how crude the firmware is and how the programmer should have made more of an attempt to use the Hardware instead! It then states "This list is not exhaustive", which probably should state "This list is not extensive", And then lists one game - Xevious. The funny thing about this is I think a great many games may have at least one Firmware routine in it - but I don't really know, AMSOFT games I would certainally feel confident in suggesting that many of those games (if not all) would have some Firmware somewhere in it. The trouble in that part of The Games section is it doesn't mention the firmware routines which can be used to great effect. MC FRAME FLYBACK - &BD19 has been deemed as quite useful.

Also I wish to add a category to include all game ocntrollers and pointers (mouses, light pens) and to on...

How should I name it ?

Gamecontroller is a bit false as some of those are not "Games only"...

Would the term " Input Device" be accurate enough ?

It sounds reasonible given their Input Devices, perhaps with sub-sections if something is extensive (e.g. Joysticks). I guess if your dealing with one thing - it maybe a one off Input Device, then there's a Other Section for those things.

Also a note on naming the categories :

=Try to avoid plurials : of course when you are on the category page there are a lot of entry, but when you are at an individual page, the product/content treat about one thing, which is then (exemple) Aone of theses stuffs...

Exemple :

Joystick speed kind . it is An/one [[Category:Input Device]].

Lower case/Upper cases :
is the Category has more than one word : Upper case for each Words...

=[[Category:Input Device]] : good
=[[Category:Input device]] or [[Category:input device]] : not good

Also check the upper cases for some stuffs...

SumbOS : good
Symbos : not good.

Off course if a few categories are in plurial, this may not be that problematic, always check if there are no existing same stuff but with other upper/lower cases or plurials.

Exemples : Category:Peripherals is plurial... well, it is an old one and has a shitton of stuff in, so lets just keep it that way.

Perhaps :
Wwhen the category is quite generic, includes a complet list of stuff... plurial can be good,

if not, well...

I would like your thinking about this... I mean i'm not a Native English cow.... I'm just a French cow, hence my spanish cow english...

Plurials : how do they f****g work ?

I would have thought the Wiki would use Plurials when dealing with the Groups for example Joysticks, Games, Programming Languages, Magazines, Books all are items which consist of a group of things! But within those groups you come to the indivual items as an entity which is where the Plurials stop! Though all of those things exist in quantities, while they exist in quantities, it's still a particular item and using plurial is unnecessarily. The closest you get to using Plurials is if you were grouping something like Games together - e.g. "Platform Games", "Shoot-em-ups", "Adventures", "Puzzle Games" for instance.

Also Perhaps I should include a "category:Connectic" ? or get it a different name...
This would be some sub-category of internal components, peripherals too, DIY, and Hardware...

Not sure, guess so if it's absolutely necessarily.

peripherals should be the "every things" stuff perhaps ? or should it be reserved for external extensions ?

Peripherals I believe is reserved for external components. Some people say you can remove the AMSDOS ROM and install the ParaDOS ROM in it's place, I'm unsure if you call that a peripheral or not cause in a sense you're modyifying your CPC by removing a component from your computer and installing another. The Peripheral maybe something like ParaDOS on ROM Board which could be attached to the Expansion Board, though it may not even be a Peripheral as such.

BTW, i'm starting to clean the Hardware category...
Please tell me if some stuff are done badly... before I spend too much time on this and have then to correct it all.

Only had a brief look at it, though appears to look good.

Another stuff : the robots :
fishertechnics or whatever...

What should be this category named ?
There are not a lot of those, but we must remember a 8 bit computer was supposed to be used in industrial environment, to actually controle mecanical machines, and act as a fancy automaton or automaton interface/terminal...

Yet I don't know how to qualify those fancy toys like the turtle of robotic arms or whatever...

BTW I let them in the peripheral category....

Perhaps a Category:Robotic may fit ?

Computer controlled Robots would probably belong in peripherals, though the book I have suggests they can do all sorts of tasks - depending on the type of robot it is. I guess in some sense that could also include Plotters, though some people put Printers and Plotters together, in a sense a Printer can be the crudest form of robot which simply works backwards and fowards, a Plotter (well the one I saw in operation), has a different approach to how it will generate it's output which appears more robotic, I'm guessing here but a Plotter may simply draw something based on how an image was drawn, so it may draw it in the same manner to how the image was originally drawn. Another robot I played with on an Apple II based system, used a series of Lights to simulate how a routine was written (in Logo I think it was done) and other Robots are more Robot like with some form of arm and hand.

MacDeath · 00:57, 28 December 10

Ok guys...

I added some new stuffs...

Category:French companies
Category:Spanish companies
Category:UK companies

Of course we should add other countries ... German most probably, or even more "exotic" ones...

So you guys from elswhere, feel free to add the same for your country if there are some pages and content from your country (were there any Greek company ?).

If so try to do As I did for those 3 countries and put the companies into those category whenever possible.

But you know, the gCPC related companies were from everywhere... mustn't be a lot of american companies per exemple, are there any ?

Those 3 categories (and the equivalent for other countries) have been put into :

[[Category:CPC related companies]] [[Category: Computer and video game companies]]

I'm thinking about putting also [[Category:Hardware]] [[Category: Software]]... well, it is an easy to reverse maneuver, so why not. (Post Edit : I did...)

as it is a classification by country, it is a specific one, no need to put too much categories...

Just tell me if you think [[Category:Hardware]] [[Category: Software]] is good too ? I think it is as Hardware and Software are there just to browse the CPCwiki...

So I need your help to all of you to check the various companies and sort them by nationnality when you can...

Because, well you know, i know mostly French ones...

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