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Tables for camera stats in the Wiki

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08/07/2013 21:42

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Since we have started to add camera details like serial, lens, owner and other characteristics to the Wiki, I think it would be more practical to organize these datasets in tables instead of entering them as text as we do now.
If you look here you'll see the limits of the current method. I spent an evening trying to organize the different columns but it's next to impossible.
http://ussrphoto.com/Wiki/default.asp?WikiCatID=98&ParentID=1&ContentID=87&Item=FED+1a

The wiki editor includes quite sophisticated table-features, so technically it should be easy to re-write the text to tables and edit/expand them in the future.

However, it currently seems impossible to edit text color and -size in the wiki editor which makes tables almost unusable. The standard color of text in tables is black and it is too large.

I've been experimenting a little here, editing the properties in source code:
http://ussrphoto.com/Wiki/default.asp?ContentID=990&ParentID=1&WikiCatID=98

What do you think?
Should we use tables or stick to the current method of simple text?
We could also make the cell borders of the table visible which further increases readability.

Pro:
more professional look
better readability
easier to update and edit if it works right
easier to extract information

Con:
non-trivial for beginners
currently very hard to use as text size and color cannot be edited except in source code
easier to mess up if something goes wrong in editing

Maybe the admin - Vlad? - could somehow add the features to change text size and color to the wiki editor, this would be perfect!

Regards,
Christian

EDIT:
Sorry' I should have put this in the Wiki Catalogue section...

08/08/2013 04:02

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Why even bother with this catalog. Sorry, but it's not working. After 6 years there's only 1 Zorki-C, only 1 Zorki-2C. I would rather use other websites to get info, such as sovietcams.com or fotoua.com. Even for very popular cameras like Fed-1 the info here is marginal.
Maybe it has to do with secrecy, some collectors want to keep their cams hidden and I can understand that when some got burglarized in the past.
I would rather like to see how some collectors do their own database. There might be some who are only interested in one camera and they might have the best detailed info.

08/08/2013 08:48

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Christian,

I will only insist on easiness. If something is changed in the wiki, things must not become too complex. Some of us (me, the first) are not of the good generation! That does not mean it must stay as it is, of course.

Something puzzles me. At the beginning, we did not have this "jumped" lines when adding something in the wiki. I wonder why? But Vlad must know! Wink

Thanks for your propositions.

Jacques.

08/08/2013 17:25

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Well, I can only speak for the FED1 section, but I think we really increased the amount of items listed within the last year.

I agree with Jacques, the point is that I think it would be easier if the tables-function worked properly. That's why I asked if Vlad could somehow add the features to change text size and color to the editor.

I do not now why the editor creates these jumped lines or paragraphs, I can only delete them in the code-form of the editor.

Unfortunately I don't know much about html either, I work on a trial & error basis which is often quite frustrating.Black eye

Regards,
Christian

08/09/2013 02:39

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HI Christian,

I agree with you that the use of tables would tidy things up. I am sorry, I have already messed up your reorganisation by adding my FED-1a back in.

David.

08/09/2013 16:58

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David,
thanks for the addition, no need to apologize!Big smile
A am thankful for each and every entry.

Removing the empty line that is actually a paragraph is easy:

.)In the Wiki editor - klick the "Source" button so the page is displayed in code

.)Search your new entry and remove the paragraph by deleting all code that the editor places before or after it.
Entry1<s>


</s>Your new Entry

Entry2


.)Add a bracket to the end of your entry if it is not there already:
Entry1

Your new Entry

Entry2


Each line has to end with a bracket or the text will stick together.

You will only see definite results if you submit your changes to the wiki and reload the page.

I do no know why the editor always adds paragraphs but does not display them, or how to change this, but if you do not want to mess with code just contribute your entries as you always did, I will periodically look through the wiki and clean up a little.Wink

For now I think using tables is too complicated, maybe this will change in the future if the editor gets more user friendly.

Regards,
Christian

08/12/2013 09:37

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Hello everyone, sorry to be randomly absent, something happened to my email account, it's blocking all notifications from this site and my ISP is refusing to resolve it, so I only see posts when I visit the site, and that happens not as often as I would like with my busy schedule..

So... to address some concerns here.. regarding editor, it's not quite trivial to use for advanced formatting, but unfortunately when running a free site, I was resorted to non-commercial components so I got the best of what was available at the time.. I would love to have this these entries HTML formatted but unfortunately for the people with no HTML skills it'll be difficult to edit later, so we pretty much settled on "manual" or tabulated formatting which makes it easy for anyone to add text to the entries, it's really about common accessibility and ease of use rather than pretty layout..

In terms of having, for example, every since possible variation layed out here for Zorki 4, this site is capable of this feature, but really Aidas's site (sovietcams.com) is so much superior in this case (part of the reason is his different approach of maintaining the control of it completely and doing an incredibly tremendous job of categorizing the cameras, which god knows how many hours he put into), that users of this site simply decided to maintain one example of each camera for the most part in the catalog and the rest use the site as a meeting place and forum and leave the advanced categorization to the individual sources such as our friend Aidas Pikiotas and Viktor Suglob with his book. It somewhat makes sense since it may create information redundancy and promote confusion. Since this is a wiki, people as a group steer the development of this site, personally I don't have that much time to invest into this project anymore with a busy job and small children, so I let it develop itself, I just try to keep it running for you all.

Having said that, Christian, I will check if there is a new version of FCKEditor out there (the open source editor I'm using for the wiki entries) and see if it got any easier, to be honest I haven't seen a good and easy to use WYSIWIG web-based editor, even among commercial products like Telerik or Infragistics. Web browsers just aren't that flexible as stand alone PC apps.

Cheers,
Vlad

08/12/2013 16:05

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Vlad,

Aidas's site is really most interesting. Thanks to him! But it is also very complex as it needs to inventory all the Russian stuff ever made. A never-ending work which must be finally controlled by a man alone, I think.

But we cannot compare with the wiki the aim of the which is different (and perhaps more ambitious): the additions and the control are made by the group, not by the webmaster. And our originality is to register the serial numbers of some interesting cameras. So, it would be fine if we could add or correct details without the help of somebody else.

I always wonder why there are now these "jumped lines" which did not appear earlier.

Sorry to tell platitudes...

Jacques.



08/12/2013 18:47

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Thanks, Vlad!

I only have the most basic html skills myself but I learn by trial & error.
I think the wiki editor is quite fine, only that it always adds a paragraph resulting in an empty line when you hit enter, yet doesn't show this in the WYSIWYG view.
Interestingly, the forum editor lets you change font size and color but the wiki editor doesn't.

If you find time for an update which fixes this it would be great, but it's really not that urgent.

I've spent the last days trying to format the wiki entries of camera serials, I think they look quite orderly now.

Regards,
Christian

08/13/2013 19:43

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Jacques I absolutely agree with you, the serial # tracking is unprecedented in all the Soviet camera resources and is only possible by our collaborative environment.

Christian, thank you very much for your efforts! I will look into editor configuration maybe there's a way to turn on color.

Cheers,
Vlad.

08/13/2013 19:49

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Christian, I added the text color and size options to the editor. Clear your browser cache, refresh the web site and try to edit an entry.

Best regards,
Vlad.
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