IntroductionFruit of the Shed (FotS) is a
Wiki based system; that is a collection of self-contained articles that might link out to other parts of the wiki or the internet beyond. Each article can contain text and images just like a stand-alone web page - you even use a markup language, just like web pages, to format the look and feel of the page. Web pages tend to use a very common markup called (in various forms & versions) HTML. Wikis tend to use custom markup because the requirements for flexibility etc are much smaller - you are just formatting some text and pictures, not styles and javascript etc. You create and publish your ideas etc. without the hassle of running a website. Through collaboration, the website builds itself through the multiple efforts of everyone.
The idea for each wiki is to record, convey and enable discussion of ideas, creations and implementation of just about anything - Wikipedia doesn't have "wiki" in the title by accident - an entire encyclopedia has been created out of wiki articles and many more wikis exist besides.
FotS was started to capture and grow a library of computer code for people mainly interested in the home-brew electronics arena. There is a heavy focus on MMBasic but also PIC assembler and electronic circuit ideas & designs. Each area is termed a "NameSpace" or "Zone". Wiki articles live in zones, grouping common-themed articles - There is no practical limit to the number of zones and more can be added as needed.
Markup?Markup is a series of special character sequences (called "tags") inserted in a wiki article. The text of an article is "parsed" by the wiki server before being displayed on your browser. By going through the text and looking for special sequences, the article can be formatted to look just how you want it. With FotS, you can even use a limited set of HTML tags in your article - for formatting lists etc.
Editing your ArticleTo create or edit an article, you use the wikimarkup editor built in to FotS. Here is an existing article loaded into the editor. The red boxes highlight key areas of this workspace as follows:
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- The main page Title. You can change this later, but the first time you create a page, this is used as the article link name.
- Save the page - this will take you out of the editor afterwards. If you want to save your work so far but carry on working, you can Save & Continue. Cancel will abandon your work since the last save - there is no UnDo!
- The main article editing space. Here is where you enter your article text, any markup, links to other pages etc.
- An article can have other bits of information stored with it which help to identify a specific purpose. You can specify a certain category - a type of article and add keywords that help when someone searches the wiki. Here you would use words that you want to "stick out" even if that word doesn't actually appear in the article.
- Attachments. If your article includes a zip file or similar, you can attach the file(s) to the article here
Along the top of the editor panel is a ruler of special function buttons. These are arranged into groups by function as follows.
These are the main buttons you will use to produce your article, but there are others which will help you to get it looking just right
Your are encouraged to play with these buttons - you can't break anything - you article might look horrible, but that is fixable.
Back to Markup for a momentAs you use the buttons in the editor, you start to see character sequences appear in your article that you didn't type - this is the markup being inserted for you in the text. Experienced users often enter the markup themselves as they become accustomed to it.
Using Pictures in your ArticleMost Wikis require that you upload any pictures first - there is no way to start writing your article and simply paste a picture into it as you go. The file manager allows you to store pictures (actually any file) to use in your article later:
Then select the directory where you want to store the file (try to make it appropriate) or create a new directory if you want. Choose the file from your computer and upload it. The file is now available to use within any wiki articles.
Hint: Often you are writing your article and you want to insert a picture. You don't need to save out of the editor, upload your file then come back to the editor if you use
a trick of your browser. Holding down the control key, click on the "Main Page" link at the top of the page. That will open that link in a new window. From here you can get to the file manager and the editor will wait patiently in the other window. When you have done your upload as above, click back on the tab with the editor and you can now insert your file... and the editor never knew!
Special FunctionsText Blocks:
FotS will parse all the text in an article and interpret any markup to apply formatting to the final text you see in your browser. Unfortunately, some markup sequences can occur commonly in sections of computer code. If you just pasted your code into the article it is likely that it won't look right - besides being hard to distinguish from the main body text of the article. These two buttons:
provide seperate areas that you can copy program code into in a fashion that no parsing happens. For example, strings of hyphens are common in code, but hyphens also mean something as markup and so your article would look nothing like you expected. Use the "inline code" or "block code" buttons to enforce the style you want:
Inline Code:
Function Remain(Tmr As Integer) As Integer' stops a timer, Clears the flag and returns the remaining amount of time in the counter
TMRini(Tmr)=TMRini(Tmr) And &h3FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FlagRes(Tmr+TmrFgOffset)
Remain=TMRctr(Tmr)
End Function
Block Code (best for computer code):
Function Remain(Tmr As Integer) As Integer' stops a timer, Clears the flag and returns the remaining amount of time in the counter
TMRini(Tmr)=TMRini(Tmr) And &h3FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
FlagRes(Tmr+TmrFgOffset)
Remain=TMRctr(Tmr)
End Function
These three buttons prevent the parsing of the markup. Suppose you wanted to put in a block of text where you were showing a specific set of tags... how do you stop them being acted upon, preventing them from being shown as you intended?
These buttons respectively
- Wrap the text in "Ignore all markup tags", both wiki and HTML
Like this... <li>Escape just the wiki markup tags</li>
- Wrap the text in "Ignore just the wiki markup tags" like this... @@ code block @@
- Wrap the text in "Ignore line breaks" - The block of text will appear as one continuous paragraph.
like this...Mary had a little lamb,
it's fleece was white as snow.
and everywhere that Mary went...
The two buttons
allow text to be emphasized with a box, or marked as comments. Comments can be used to add a todo list in an article and are not displayed in an article, only in the editor.
Finally, this last function
Allows you to insert a special character that would normally be parsed out - i.e. part of a markup sequence. A small drop down menu allows you to click on the desired character and it will appear literally in the article.
Please feel free to edit this article to add or improve functionality you feel should be mentioned.