Howto:How to create new articles

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Revision as of 11:36, 26 February 2015 by Flp (talk | contribs) (→‎Templates)
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Create a new article

Please read the following rules, before creating an article.

Search the existing articles

Before creating a new article, look first if your subject has been already covered in another article. It is always better to edit an existing article, than to create a new one.


Templates

There are different templates for new articles available. To use an template you must first choose the right category for your new article.

Here a short example: You want to write a new Howto article. Go to the wiki page Create New Page and use the textbox howto to type in your new article name. Please do not delete the already inserted "Howto: " . This detemines in which namespace your new article will be created. Click on the create article button and you will be directed to your new page. However keep in mind that the templates are not obligatory. If you think your new articles doesn't need all the points inserted by the template, feel free to modify them.

If you feel no template is appropriate for your new article, your are of course free to start it from scratch. However, make sure that your new article is in the right namespace and that it is categorized correctly.

The article title

Article names should contain normal words or phrases. For example use "SIP Provider Compatibility Report" instead of an abbreviated form like "SIPCompatRep". Normally a user will look for keywords like "Provider" or "Compatibility". If you use an abreviated title the mediawiki search engine will not find a matching article.

The article text

Don't use abbreviations shorter than three letters. For example use "compact flash" instead of "CF". The mediawiki search engine will not search strings shorter than three characters.

wiki links

If you want to link to other articles in this wiki, use if possible intra-wiki links instead of externeal links. Example:

  • Good
[[ Create_New_Page | Create New Page]]
  • Bad
[http://wiki.innovaphone.com/index.php?title=Create_New_Page Create New Page]

In some cases you might find it usefull to link to a entire category of pages. You can do this by using category links. Example:

[[:Category:Compat|Compatibility Articles here]]


Embedding Images/Screenshots

  • Resize application window that you want to show (good example, bad example)
  • Cut unnecessary picture areas
  • Pressing Alt-PrintScreen places an image of the frontmost window on the clipboard. Pressing PrintScreen by itself places an image of the entire desktop on the clipboard.
  • Open MS-Paint. (From Start/Run, issue the command "mspaint".) Create a new empty image, and use Edit/Paste to bring in the screenshot you just took. (If the screenshot is smaller than the default Paint canvas, you'll end up with white areas. Start over: create a new empty image, change its dimensions to 1x1, and Paste again. The canvas will grow for the Paste, but it doesn't shrink.)
  • Do not scale screenshots, this make it unreadable
  • Use MS-Paint to Save As, using PNG as the file format (it is superior to all the rest, JPG is bad choice)

For files that are relevant for the current article only, please follow the image naming scheme. That is, prefix the name with the article name and add a sequential number. This will make sure that file names related to different articles do not conflict. So, instead of using screenshot1.png, rather use e.g. How to create new articles 03.png.

Screenshots are included using the [[Image:xyz.png]] syntax.

IrfanView - usefull free tool for making large number of screenshots:

  • install
  • run
  • press c to configure and start capture
    • set capture area(Foreground window - Client area)
    • set output folder
    • set PNG as output file format
  • press Ctrl+F11 to make screenshot

Screenshots (Screen Dumps) from innovaphone Phones LCD Displays

http://192.168.0.1/lcd_dump.bmp


Network Diagrams

In some cases it is easier to draw a simple network diagram to describe some networking scenario. For this purpose a free graph editor yEd from yWorks can be used to create network diagrams including shapes for innovaphone devices.

Installation procedure

  • download yEd diagram editor from yWorks homepage, install and run it once
  • download innovaphone-pictograms from <dfslink>\\inno-sifi\dfs\Interne Dokumente\Präsentationen\inno_master\yEd_Shapes</dfslink>
  • unpack file and extract innovaphone.grapml into
    • WinXP/Vista: C:\documents and settings\USERNAME\.yed3
    • Win7: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\yWorks\yEd\ or C:\Users\USERNAME\.yed3
  • Exact location depends on where yEd stores its runtime data. Look for a directory that contains realizers.xml and settings.xml.
  • Recent version of yEd (version 3.7 will do) supports direct import of the user defined palettes. In this case right click on any existing palette and import innovaphone.grapml

Recommend practice to use shapes

  • Adaption of existing drawings
    • Open drawing in yed
    • Mark shape to be replaced
    • Right click on marked shape
    • Select Properties/SVG
    • Select More..., choose new shape out of the ones included in the package
  • Creation of new drawings
    • use shapes from palette innovaphone
    • one can hide the embedded description by right click on shape, properties, label, uncheck visible checkbox

yEd can export diagrams in PNG file format that should be used to upload on wiki. Innovaphone employees should check notes regarding network diagram source files storage.

Uploading Files

Generally, the inno-wiki is not a download site. If you still feel it appropriate to provide downloads on a page, you can upload the file just like you would for screen shots.

We support uploading of Images, txt', pdf and zip files.

Downloads are included using the [[Media:xyz.zip]] syntax.

Keywords

In some cases you may want that your article should be found if the search function is looking for certain keywords. However this keywords don't fit in your article context, because they are in a foreign language or simply synoyms of used technical terms. In this case just use the Keyword paragraph, to insert the desired keywords in your article.

Editing an existing article

Often people make just small changes to a page, for example typing errors. Mediawiki offers the posibility to mark changes as minor. You will find the checkbox "This is a minor edit" just over the "Save page" button.

minor edit checkbox

This will make sure people watching a page (see below) do not get notified just because of such a minor update.

Staying up-to-date with articles

If you think an article has very essential content and want to stay informed about every change made to this page, you can use the watchlist feature. To add a page to your watchlist, just use the link "watch" on top of the page.

watch link

In order to be automatical informed by mail about recent changes to pages on your watchlist, you have to make some adjustments to your preferences. By using the Specialpage "Preferences" My Preferences you can enable the feature E-mail me when a page I'm watching is changed .

Related Articles

Create New Page by using templates

General help on working with mediawiki