OMAP wiki guides

Omappedia wiki is a public, collaborative wiki and no company-sensitive material should be posted here. It uses Mediawiki and is easy to use. Some guidelines are listed in the form of Q&amp;A.

Q: How do I create a topic?

 * A: The easiest way is to use the 'Go' box in the left hand navigation bar. Type in the topic e.g. "my subject topic" and Mediawiki will let you create that topic presuming that exact topic hasn't already been created.

Note that you have to be logged on before you can create a page. If you're not logged on and try the steps above, you'll just get a "failed to locate that page" error with no option to create it.

Q: I have a bunch of HTML, MS Word and Excel content I'd like to put in Mediawiki format. What can I do?

 * A: See Wikisyntax_conversion_utilities and Converting_documents_to_mediawiki_markup. There are many similar converters available if you google this.

As an example let's say you have a .doc MS Word file with a few tables etc that you want to turn into Mediawiki format. To do this you could install Word2MediaWikiPlus. Essentially: - 1. Download the latest Word2MediaWikiPlus version. Save the zip file anywhere.

2. Open up Word2MediaWikiPlus_Installer.doc, enable Macros. Follow the instructions and click Install or Update Macro

3. After some simple configuration this will give you a Convert To Wiki button. Open up your Word doc and click this button. This will go thru the article and convert it to Mediawiki format.

4. Select the whole article (CTRL-A), copy it (CTRL-C), and paste it into a Mediawiki article (CTRL-V). Done. Note that you probably dont want to save the converted .doc file directly in Word since it converts it "in-place". Just save it in the wiki directly.

Q: What file types can I upload?

 * A: Most of the key read-only file types are supported. For example if you have a Powerpoint Presentation, you must first convert it to PDF (using one of the many converters available), before uploading it. Options here include: -
 * pdf995. Free. Allows you to create PDF files by simply selecting the "print" command from any application
 * Adobe Standard. Not free but is able to convert and preserve embedded URL links in a .ppt (or .doc) when converted to a .pdf file.

Q: What's the limit on file size uploads?

 * A: 4Mb. This wiki is NOT intended to be a repository for code! Split up presentation-PDFSs etc to keep size down.

Q: Can I upload code?

 * A: Yes...however see above! Sample code can be attached as tar.gz or zip files.

Products should not be uploaded on the wiki; instead you should link to a product release website. This wiki is not intended to be a software distribution channel, but can be used to provide links to products and other reference material.

Q: Can I create a topic off-line then post it once I'm happy with it?

 * A: Sure. We use this offline Mediawiki Editor. It works quite well.

Q: Any guidelines for adding content?

 * A: Sure. Some common sense guidelines include: -
 * double-check your content for any references that cannot be made public &amp; remove them.
 * double-check your content for company sensitive material (unannounced devices, products etc) &amp; remove them.
 * Use the Show Preview button before using the Save Page button.
 * give the topic a decent name e.g. don't call a topic 'FAQs' - instead put the name of the product in the topic title somewhere. This is especially important with direct URL access - our mediawiki uses a flat namespace i.e. ?title=sometopic means that there can be only 1 'sometopic'.

Q: Any guidelines for adding attachments?
A file with this name exists already, please check Image:Release 610 overview public.pdf if you are not sure if you want to change it. You can then choose to rename your destination filename or overwrite the original if it makes sense.
 * A: Sure. The key point to note is that Mediawiki has a flat namespace for all Media &amp; Image content i.e. you cant have 2 files named stuff.pdf or image1.jpg. Hence, please name your attachments reasonably e.g. cg_xml_v2_12_layout.jpg not 1.jpg. If you try to upload a file with the same name Mediawiki will warn you: -

Q: Can I associate my wiki topic with a bunch of categories?

 * A: Sure. At the bottom of your wiki page just list out multiple categories - the same topic will then show up in each of them - simple! See this page for an example of how to do this

Q: Can I find out if my topic is popular?

 * A: Yes. See http://omappedia.org/wiki/Special:PopularPages

Q. When I create a page, how can I be sure nobody already created a similar topic?

 * A: When u create a topic and click 'Go' Mediawiki will also show similar topics. By default the 'Main' namespace is enabled - this encompasses all the Categories within the wiki. So you can be sure that all categories &amp; topics have been searched before you make a new page.

Q. How do I create new categories?
Then click on that Category name - add some basic text e.g. This category contains information about Category name and then Save it. Done! Now users can bookmark that specific category page and all articles referencing that category will automatically show up.
 * A: See e.g. this link. In a nutshell add at the end of your topic...


 * NOTE - we are trying to keep the number of top-level categories to a minimum. For example, if new devices, projects, operating systems. It usually very painful to retrofit 100s of topics to add that new category. Hence efforts are being made to keep top-level topics fairly generic. Subcategories are Ok To make a subcategory simply add this at the bottom of the subcategory page.

Q. How do I spell check my wiki post?

 * A: In Internet Explorer, install the Google Toolbar then use Check -&gt; Autofix
 * A: In Firefox the spellchecker is built-in.

Q. Dont you have a WYSIWYG editor.
We have not installed a WYSIWYG editor as most of them dont integrate well with Mediawiki. We will continue to follow the mediawiki usability project and will make stable improvement that are released out of it.

Q. How do I syntax highlight code examples?
We have not installed any specialized extensions to highlight code. But, are evaluating some. In the mean while a good way to highlight code is via /* Your code here */

Q. What is the policy on "promotional material"?
The wiki is for technical, collaborative information. It is not intended to be a platform to aggressively promote particular 3rd party tool features. Please ensure topics on 3rd party commerical offerings are objective, presenting only the technical details and referring users to other websites for pricing and sales information.

Q. Why do you use short-hand URL links sometimes?
We encourage users to do this CCSv4 instead of this CCSv4 simply because the former is independent of the URL i.e. its a relative link. This insulates topics from potential changes in the URL (note that we won't change the URL - it's just good practice)

Q. I want multiple search terms to point to the same place. How do I do this?
Check out redirects.

Q. How do I give feedback about a topic, or ask a question?
Wiki is primarily a 1-way information mechanism, however you can give feedback on topics by using the Discussion tab. The author (and everybody else) will typically see the feedback via their RSS feed. Please do not expect the topic to be modified to instantly address any questions posted on a Discussion. Authors should do their best to respond/apply feedback.

Q. Are there any guidelines to follow when contributing?
There is a list of best practices at the following location. Best Practices

Q. How do I use syntax highlighting for the code snippet?
We have SyntaxHighlight GeSHi extension enabled. On the wiki page, you can now use "source" tag for syntax highlighting.

For example if you type below on a wiki page:

then it show:

Please see SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi for list of supported languages.