This is the general FAQ for this Wiki. Feel free to add questions and answers.

General questions

Can I use the Wiki using a certain language for the framework?

Yes. Actually there are two aspects here.

General infrastructure

The MoinMoin Wiki engine underlying this Wiki is fully internationalized. This means that the general infrastructure can be in any language. It is localized to a number of languages so there is a high possibility that one of the supported languages is a language you can read.

If you have are logged in you can set your preferred language on UserPreferences. I.e. if you select Deutsch in the drop down box the navigation and some other aspects of the Wiki is presented to you in German. Otherwise the language preference set in your web browser determines the language chosen for presentation.

So far the help pages are localized to some of the supported languages. Check SystemPagesGroup for a group of system pages in your language and check whether the help pages are translated already.

Content pages

Each content page is written in a certain language. A proper page contains a language tag (for instance #language en) at the beginning naming the language used. Since MoinMoin is internationalized each human language can be used for a page.

You can search for all pages in a given language if you search for this tag. Just enter "#language xx" in the search box (including the quotes!) and do a full text search.

In general content pages are available only in one language. If there are translations of a certain content page a well maintained page list these translations.

Where can I find more help?

The general help for this wiki can be found on OekonuxWiki/Help. Other places to check are CategoryHelp and [#Extensions Extensions].

What does ''logged in'' mean?

In this Wiki everyone can create an own account. If you log in to the Wiki using your account you are logged in. If you are logged in you can set some preferences and edit pages.

Do I need an account in this Wiki?

For browsing and reading the Wiki you don't need an account.

If you want to change existing pages or create new pages you need an account. We need to take this measure to make it harder to automatically spam the Wiki. If you do not have an account you can create one by clicking on Login and follow the instructions under the header First time. It would also be great if you could create your personal home page by creating a page named as your account.

I'm offline often. Can I use the Wiki anyway?

There are features to use the Wiki offline. However, they are not publicly available yet and very limited. If you are interested in such an option feel free to contact <projekt AT oekonux DOT de>.

Why did you choose this license?

Please refer to the LicenseFAQ.

Why are discussion pages called /Talk?

The templates are set up in a way that each page by default contains a link to a page for dicussing the content of this page. This page is always called /Talk regardless of the language used. This is a reminiscence to MediaWiki where there is a namespace with a fixed name Talk: used for this purpose. Indeed it is questionable whether for this Wiki this makes sense at all.

I don't like how this Wiki looks. Can I change the look for me?

Yes. If you are logged in the settings in your UserPreferences apply. Among other things you can change how the Wiki looks to you. Pick one of the available themes under the Preferred themes option.

If you are still not content then you may refer to the theme market for MoinMoin and try some out by using the theme macro. If your favorite theme is not supported yet please drop a note on <projekt AT oekonux DOT de> asking for it and it may be installed.

If you are still not content with what is available you may consider composing your own theme. Please refer to HelpOnThemes for this.

Editing

I can not edit a certain page. Why?

In general only logged in users can edit pages in the Oekonux Wiki. We regret this but unfortunately Wikis are also spammed nowadays and the need to login makes it a bit more difficult for spammers.

But I still can not edit this particular page. Why this?

In MoinMoin it is possible to protect a page from being edited as well as some other types of access. The page you can not change though you are logged in may be protected by these means. You can check this if you look at the source of the page and find some #acl ... in the first few lines.

What sorts of syntax are available in this Wiki?

Each page in a Wiki must be written in a more or less special syntax. MoinMoin is not fixed to a single syntax but in general allows for arbitrary plain text based syntaxes. The syntax of a page is determined in the header lines of a page where you can put a #format xxx to use syntax xxx. The following syntaxes are available:

MoinMoin

This is the default syntax of MoinMoin. It is described on HelpOnEditing.

Note: In this Wiki installation we use a slightly modified version of this syntax without WikiWords leading to automatic links. If you want the original MoinMoin syntax including WikiWords then put

#format wiki

in the first line of your page.

MediaWiki

For those used to MediaWiki syntax we included a parser for MediaWiki syntax which can handle a pretty much of the MediaWiki syntax. Also some old pages are in this format. If you prefer MediaWiki syntax for your page then put

#format media

in the first line of your page. Refer to the ../MediaWikiFAQ for more information about this syntax.

PlainText

If you have a page of plain ASCII text you'd like to put in the Wiki it is possible to include it right away. Just put

#format plain

in the first line of your page.

reStructuredText

reStructuredText is a very powerful and logical markup syntax. It is not designed as a Wiki syntax but as a general ASCII based markup syntax and it is maintained by an active user community. In particular reStructuredText pages can be converted to a lot of formats so reStructuredText sources can be used outside the Wiki as well. If you want reStructuredText syntax for your page then put

#format rst

in the first line of your page.

Please refer to HelpOnParsers/ReStructuredText for more information on how to use reStructuredText in MoinMoin. You may also be interested in the reStructuredText quick reference.

Is there an easy way to link to other Oekonux resources?

Yes. There is some abbreviation syntax built into MoinMoin making possible short links to well-known resources called InterWiki. Check the InterWiki page for which abbreviations are available.

For the links into the mail archives listed there add the five-digit-number of the mail in the respective archive (shown in the upper left of the mail in the archive) and add .html. Also add a prefix wiki: so there is no chance for misinterpretation. Thus [wiki:Archive_ox:00000.html the German welcome mail] refers to the German welcome mail.

Editing in a browser sucks. Any better idea?

Editing larger texts in a HTML browser is certainly no fun. One way to use a real editor is to use w3m and configure the editor of your choice.

I'd like to put an e-mail address in a page. What about spam bots?

MoinMoin has a feature which makes mail links only for logged in users and obfuscating mail addresses for others. This is a fairly simple method to combine security from spam with the usability of mail links. Please refer to wiki:HelpOnMacros/MailTo for a description.

Operations on pages

How do I create a new page?

Basically you need an URL to the page you want to create. The easiest way is this:

  1. Decide on the parent page you want to put your new page under.

    Note: You can create top level pages as well, but in this Wiki usually you don't want this.

  2. View the parent page normall.

  3. Jump to the URL field of your Web browser.

  4. Right behind the name of the parent page add a / and the name of the page you want to create.

  5. Press RETURN.

After a short moment you should see a dialog helping you to create a new page. You have three options:

  1. Create a completely empty page.

    Note: This is not recommended. Use the next option instead.

  2. Use one of the page templates available by clicking on one of the templates you see on the left side of the panel.

    The page templates are named so their purpose can be understood. Most of the time you will use the NormalTemplate for normal pages and the DiscussionTemplate for discussion pages.

    The page templates contain some common structure, markup typically wanted and useful hints. They are desgined to work together well. Please use them.

  3. Go to an existing page with a similar name instead of creating a new one by clicking on one of the pages listed on the right side of the panel.

    This is actually not an option to create a new page but to select the one you really wanted but had a typo in the URL.

Then you can edit the page normally.

What are templates?

A template in MoinMoin is like an unfinished Wiki page which you may use to base your own new page on. It typically contains elements of a certain structure which should be used in the Wiki to give it a coherent style. It may also contain tricks and tipps.

It is also useful to create templates for pages of different purposes. The templates in this Wiki are

Please refer to the guidelines of this Wiki for more information.

And no: MediaWiki used for Wikipedia uses the term "template" a bit different. Templates in MediaWiki are more like a very limited and reduced form of macros in MoinMoin. So far there is no equivalent to the (page) templates of MoinMoin in Wikipedia.

How do I delete a page?

Depending on the layout you choose there is somewhere a drop down box More Actions:. In this drop down box there is an entry Delete Page. Use it.

How do I rename a page?

Depending on the layout you choose there is somewhere a drop down box More Actions:. In this drop down box there is an entry Rename Page. Use it. Please note that subpages are not automatically renamed. If there are subpages you need to rename them by hand.

How do I get the differences created by an edit?

There are two ways to get the differences. On every page somewhere there is a link Show changes. This link leads the most recent change of that page.

The other way is to use the Get Info link somewhere on every page. Then you get a dialog where you can select the revisions between which you want to see the differences. On this page you also can choose to look at every single revision as well as checking who edited a certain revision when and why.

Mail notification

Is it possible to get informed about changes in the Wiki?

Yes. MoinMoin employs a mail notification feature you can configure in your UserPreferences. See HelpOnUserPreferences for details. If you are interested in a single page just use the subscribe button described on HelpOnNavigation.

I'd like to prevent too many notifications while editing. How?

If you edit a page and save it several times then each time a change notification is sent. You may find this annoying. There are two ways to circumvent this:

Can I subscribe to changes in a whole page category?

Yes. You can simply subscribe to the [HelpOnCategories category page] of the category you are interested in and then receive changes in all pages belonging to this category. A page belongs to a page category if it contains the category tag after editing. This means you are not notified if a page is removed from a category.

Extensions

With respect to the default MoinMoin distribution this Wiki contains a couple of extensions. They are described here.

The standard [[Navigation()]] macro sucks. Any alternatives?

The standard Navigation macro has disadvantages. It works fine for a single level of sub-pages but it is not very well suited to display deep structures.

In this Wiki there is also the (extended) Navitree macro which displays a nested structure of Wiki pages in a tree. It also is able to display the tree under a different than the current page.

How can I use the [[Navitree()]] macro?

The Navitree macro takes one or more comma-separated arguments given in the parentheses after the macro name. The first argument gives the mode of operation. There are two modes of operation (childtree and selectedtree) and the remaining arguments depend on this mode of operation:

childtree
Displays the children of the page the macro is on.

Second argument is optional and gives the depth until which the children are displayed. If not given the depth is unlimited.

selectedtree
Displays the children of another page.

Second argument is required and gives the name of the page. The page name starts directly after the comma so please do not give whitespace after the comma.

Third optional argument is the depth to be displayed.

An example displaying up to two levels of children of the Oekonux page:

How can I use smilies on reStructuredText pages?

For the standard MoinMoin syntax on HelpOnSmilies there are a couple of smilies and other small images which can be included in a page. In this Wiki these are also available for reStructuredText pages. Just do

.. include:: OekonuxWiki/Supplements/RstSmilies

and you can use (most of) the smilies by using the substitution syntax. I.e. |:-)| will lead to :-) .

The include above is also included in the templates for reStructuredText pages but commented out. If you need it remove the comment.

Is there an option to add comments to a page like in a blog?

This Wiki supports the PageComment macro which allows for such features. See StefanMerten/Technics/Blog for an example.

Please note that in this Wiki this macro is named PageComment (instead of PageComment2 which for historical reasons is its official name).

Which parameters does the [[PageComment]] macro support?

Lots. See the following list. Defaults are marked with an asterisk (*).

Output control

inputonly

0 *
Comments are shown to all users including anonymous users

1
Comments are shown only to those users who may delete the

page.

Useful to set up a area for private comments.

commentonly

0 *
Comments and input form will be shown.

1
Only comments are shown.

countonly

0 *
Normal form according to other visibility parameters

1
Just return the number of comments. Can be inlined.

newerfirst

0 *
More recent comments are listed at the end.

1
More recent comments are listed at the top.

commentfirst

0 *
Input form before the comments.

1
Comments before the input form.

Layout

tablewidth
the width of the table format. Default '' (none).

Don't use this.

articleview

0 *
Show comments in table view.

1
Show comments in an article view.

Editing

rows
The number of rows of the textarea. Default is 2.

cols

The number of columns of the textarea. Default is 60

maxlength
The maximum number of characters for comment text.

Default is 0 (no limit).

smileylist

0 *
Offer a partial smiles list as a radio button bar.

1
Show all available smilies in a drop-down list box.

nosmiley

0 *
Show smiley selection.

1
Omit smiley selection.

markup

0 *
Wiki markup in a comment is not recognized.

1
Wiki markup in the text is recognized and preview button is

activated. Some specified macros are still not recognized.

Please note that the notify parameter is accepted but is internally fixed to 1. I.e. mail notification is enforced.

Navigation

pagename
A string naming the page with the comments. Default is the current page. User must be able to read this page to be able to insert or view comments.

section
Name of a where to put the comments of this macro to.

Section name may consist of letters and digits only. Useful to create several comment areas for different purposes.

encryptpass

0 *
Passwords of anonymous users are not encrypted.

1
Passwords are stored in encrypted format.

Examples

For a blog like page try

[[PageComment(section=Main,commentfirst=1,articleview=1,newerfirst=1,markup=1,smileylist=1)]]

This creates an explicit section for the comments (section=Main), puts the input box after the comments (commentfirst=1), uses a nice layout (articleview=1), puts the most recent comments first (newerfirst=1), allows Wiki markup (markup=1), and offers the full list of smilies (smileylist=1).

For private comments try

[[PageComment(section=Private,inputonly=1)]]

Creates a section for private comments (section=Private), show the comments only to people who may delete the page (inputonly=1). To make this really private you need to add an ACL like

#acl YourUserNameHere:read,write,delete,revert,admin All:read


CategoryHelp

OekonuxWiki/Help/GeneralFAQ (last edited 2009-06-02 17:03:01 by StefanMerten)

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