[OOC][Info]Nothing Better Than This Wiki

[robkelk]

There are ways and ways to use wikis as discussion spaces for issues. Let me ponder this for a bit, please - but keep giving me suggestions while I'm pondering.

[Black Aeronaut]

I will whenever they come to mind and I happen to have a minute or three to articulate my ideas.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, after HOURS of screwing around with trying to get the formatting right, and then making sure that all the categories were properly applied...

I finally have Volume 1 of How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love the Grief Seed up on the wiki.

I have no fucking clue how you guys make this seem so easy.

[robkelk]

I have no fucking clue how you guys make this seem so easy.

Practice, practice, practice.

If you were updating wikis for an hour or three every day, it'd be easy for you, too.

[Labster]

I write my stories in markdown so all I have to do is translate the formatting.  Theoretically I can translate into wikicode with Pandoc but honestly I only do a little bit of formatting so a couple of saved regular expressions do the trick.

[Black Aeronaut]

Well, Scrivener can compile stuff into Markdown.  The real trick, though, is in getting all the fine detail stuff to translate over like linebreaks and horizontal rules.  It can be done, it's just gonna take a lot of trial and error on my part.

But looking at Pandoc now....  Kinda wish someone had mentioned it earlier.  It would have saved me a LOT of time.  And what's great is that Scrivener can compile documents in several of the formats listed in there that are two-way convertible.  And MediaWiki markup is also two-way convertible.  Which means that I can not only compile in Scrivener and convert in Pandoc, I can also do the reverse; import raw markup text from the Wiki and import it into Scrivener while preserving all of the formatting.  Score!

And the great thing about Scrivener is that it's perfect for projects like this, with a hierarchical binder, story boarding, various tags, custom metadata (holy crap the metadata tools are ridonkulous), iterative snapshots (that you can roll back to whenever from whenever), foot notes, side notes, whatever you damn well want or need notes, and even a distraction free writing mode.  Yeah, it's a bit OP as far as writing software goes.  I can even color-code everything so it works very well with both my ASD and my ADHD.

The only reason why I haven't taken full advantage of the features here is because I haven't had the time to go off on a full-on ASD-style grind-this-shit-like-D&D bender.

Anyhow, I'll just have to look at MediaWiki's markup to see what all it can and cannot do, and what output Scrivener can do that will give me the most bang for my buck.

[Labster]

When you have access to the CSS and JS files as we do, mediawiki markup can do essentially the web already does. The main thing is that it will pass through <div>s and <span>s with arbitrary classes and I think even with the style attribute, or a sanitized form thereof.

[robkelk]

I just did some wiki cleanup from a site-maintenance point of view. Files and pages are now all categorized, and we have remarkably few unused files or categories.

Wanted pages, on the other hand... there's at least 130 of them. So if somebody's bored and wants to write some background stuff - mostly character descriptions - feel free.

[Black Aeronaut]

Question about organizing stories.

For stuff with multiple parts that fit under a larger story arc, such as How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love the Grief Seed, do you think it'd be a good idea to have a main page with links to the individual volumes and side-stories?

I had the nifty idea of making the time stamps into low-level headings so they show up in the TOC... which is very nice, I think, but the issue is that it will get unwieldy once I add in Volumes 2 and 3.

[robkelk]

Sure, why not? That's what All The Tropes prefers to do with trilogies and other franchises, so it's do-able.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, it's done.

[Labster]

Why not both? You can always use transclusion (mediawiki term for inclusion to show how pro-trans they are). Make a top level page with all the sub articles, then {{/subpage}} or {{:Another page in Main}}. Depending on how it’s set up, you may or may not want to wrap categories in <noinclude>.

[robkelk]

Folks might have noticed that a few pages have iconic pictures above the title line. I just added another one, and confirmed that a page can display more than one "top icon".


  Minako's page's top icons.jpg (Size: 10.99 KB / Downloads: 66)

(A lot more informative than some padlocks, right?)

For character pages, we currently have "Magical girl" and "Musician" -- which is why I picked Minako's page to show off the top icons.

I'd like to do top icons for the other specialized character types that we've identified: Alien‎, Celestial‎, Clone‎, Cyber Intelligence‎, Cyborg‎, Esper‎, Familiar‎, Hacker‎, and Mage‎.

If somebody has some time, could you take a look on Wikimedia Commons and see whether you can find generic (i.e., not story-specific) icons for each of these, please? SVG format works best, since vector images scale well, but JPG and PNG also work.

I'm thinking a pointed hat for "Mage", and if nobody else finds one before my lunch break, I'll go look for one on Commons.

(There's also a special top icon for characters who are in my SI's household/family throughout all arcs of TNB, but that's still a work in progress. The progress will go faster now that I have Daz Studio re-installed. If anyone else wants that sort of special icon, give me a list of characters and an image and I'll set one up for you.)


Yes, we also have top icons for "story" and "working notes". Those were at the top of my list.


EDIT: Do we want story-specific icons for characters? We already mention the source story in the infobox.

RE-EDIT: Had a few minutes during a coffee break - found a usable pointy hat. And now I'm wondering what we could possibly use for a cyborg, considering the term applies to characters as varied as The Six Million Dollar Man and a Dalek.

[robkelk]

So much for a quick "catgirl" icon - the only catgirl drawing on Commons looks like a blob when scaled down.

But I found a good "Martial Artist" icon. Now to identify the characters who should get it... starting with most of the Nerima Wrecking Crew, and Lotte Lieze, and Mii Konori. EDIT: And Makoto Kino. Who did I miss?

Yes, I know they weren't on the list. I have altered the agr... list.

[robkelk]

I decided we needed a page to show how to use the displacee template and the top icons, so... here. If you think you can stay in the tone of the entry, feel free to add to it. (As of this posting, there are still two sections that use lorem ipsum instead of having actual content.)

[Bob Schroeck]

I dunno, Rob. What more can there be to add to such a figure of narrative perfection?

[Black Aeronaut]

Just an oddball question, but how does "Mage" differ from "Magical Girl" besides...  well, as Megamind puts it, "Presentation"?  I mean, there doesn't seem to be any effective difference between the two, so I don't really know if we actually need two different icons for them.

[Dartz]

One suspect's it's a matter of self-identification --- though perhaps Mage's take the whole thing just that bit too seriously and are more likely to go full Hermetic.

And then you have the Order of Hermes which is altogether more stuffy


Of course you've got some aging fossil mainlining vis while Nanoha simply pump-loads a few cartridges and puts an end to the Join-or-Die thing

[robkelk]

The way I have them set up at the moment, magical girls transform to use magic while mages don't. (Thus, Rei Hino is both.) Mages also intentionally use magic rather than using it incidentally in attacks.

It's a fuzzy distinction - for example, Nanoha transforms Raising Heart from pendant to staff.

Edit: Wikipedia uses the name "transforming heroine" for what All The Tropes calls "Magical Girl Warrior". That's a big part of the distinction.

[Norgarth]

So much for a quick "catgirl" icon - the only catgirl drawing on Commons looks like a blob when scaled down.

But I found a good "Martial Artist" icon. Now to identify the characters who should get it... starting with most of the Nerima Wrecking Crew, and Lotte Lieze, and Mii Konori. EDIT: And Makoto Kino. Who did I miss?

Yes, I know they weren't on the list. I have altered the agr... list.

other possibities for the Martial Artist icon:

Inara (Firefly)
River Tam
(Cardcaptor) Sakura's boyfriend (I'm blanking on the kid's name)
Haruka Tenno (? I think she's a martial artist, could be wrong)

[robkelk]

So much for a quick "catgirl" icon - the only catgirl drawing on Commons looks like a blob when scaled down.

But I found a good "Martial Artist" icon. Now to identify the characters who should get it... starting with most of the Nerima Wrecking Crew, and Lotte Lieze, and Mii Konori. EDIT: And Makoto Kino. Who did I miss?

Yes, I know they weren't on the list. I have altered the agr... list.

other possibities for the Martial Artist icon:

Inara (Firefly)
River Tam
(Cardcaptor) Sakura's boyfriend (I'm blanking on the kid's name)

Li Xiaolang - a romanization that not even the most rabid anime fanboys use, but is what the Chinese government would prefer. The wiki uses the easy-to-pronounce "Shaoran Li".

Icon added to all three - thanks!

Haruka Tenno (? I think she's a martial artist, could be wrong)

I'm not sure, either. She does have the Space Sword as one of her transformation items, but I don't recall whether she did or did not ever train in swordsmanship or any other martial arts (the way Makoto was shown to have trained in Sailor Moon S).

Bob, you're writing a Sailor Moon step for the Drunkard's Walk - do you recall whether Haruka is or isn't a martial artist of some sort?

EDIT: And I just remembered - if your family name is Takamachi and your given name isn't Nanoha, you get the icon. Too bad we only have a page for Miyuki at the moment.

[Black Aeronaut]

I'd like to see if I can mine some more info on the Takamachi family before I do writeups for them all. I've recently seen other writeups that has Momoko (Nanoha's mother) as not being a martial artist at all - she is simply a very good barista and pastry chef.

I have my doubts about this, though. Shirou's line of work requires that his wife not simply be his wife, but his partner in everything he does.

On top of that, Momoko is apparently Shirou's second wife! His first wife was Kyouya's mother, though what became of her I'm not sure. I think it was hinted somewhere that she passed away from some kind of illness. But this also explains why there isn't much resemblance between Kyouya and Momoko.

Given the likeness between Kyouya and Miyuki, I wouldn't be surprised if the first wife was a sibling to Miyuki's father.

The Takamachi family is complicated, but I guess that only stands to reason, what with their origins being in a popular eroge VN with a side of turn-based combat.

[Bob Schroeck]

Bob, you're writing a Sailor Moon step for the Drunkard's Walk - do you recall whether Haruka is or isn't a martial artist of some sort?

Best guess based on stances taken in the anime is that both Haruka and Michiru practice Pankration, an ancient Greek open-handed style blending elements of what today would be seen as both boxing and wrestling.

Makoto practices Jeet Kune Do -- there are a couple of shots of her where she's mimicking Bruce Lee's moves.

Rei practices Kyudo/Kyujutsu (martial archery) and appears to have some Taekwondo training, based on snap kicks she performs.

Minako appears to practice Savatte.

[Bob Schroeck]

Just an oddball question, but how does "Mage" differ from "Magical Girl" besides... well, as Megamind puts it, "Presentation"?

Okay, this is a gross over-generalization but...

Technically, a "mage" is anyone with an inborn talent for magic. That said, mages/wizards are magic-users whose power and repertoire are born of study and effort. Magical girls, on the other hand, are usually instinctive magic users -- they have abilities they didn't study to learn, and of which they may show total mastery the first time they use them -- or they are device users whose devices do all the heavy lifting for them.

[Bob Schroeck]

Makoto practices Jeet Kune Do -- there are a couple of shots of her where she's mimicking Bruce Lee's moves.

Found this image, btw: