Talk:White Pages

From Entropia Directory wiki

List Format

OWNER

Full ingame name of estate owner, may be linked to wiki user page or forum profile. Look here for an example.

CONTACT

May contain link to wiki mailuser, Forum PM or eMail address. Look here for an example.

POSITION

X, Y, Z location as it appears when you press 'p' while reading the estate terminal.

LOCATION

Eg. Amethera > Sakaura City > Tower > Floor and #

Dreamdancer

As this is all in the structure of the page, such information for every line would be redundant.

Ie, tables are sorted Amethera > Genesis HQ > Star Tower B

NAME

Name of estate, as on terminal.

EXTRA

Data on estate size, shops, point of interest and dancefloors.

Size of list and editing

Dan

Will this eventually include apartments as well?

Dreamdancer

That depends on what kind of contract I will make with JD. Right now, this is more of an example page.

Dreamdancer

Talked it through with JD, ALL estate will go in here. So that's a Yes.

Dan

Woah, that's a lot of estates :P GL!

Dreamdancer

It is. That is why i need your input, mates:

The structuring of the Apartment Towers is not quite clear to me. I'd suggest I make a list for each tower, and then list the apartments by level. Should I list stores and booths also? The display areas? Should i expand the data I gather (like apartment size, mainenance costs, balconies etc.), so it is more useful for people looking for a residence?

I made an example. Will include number of rooms also. Now has a contact column next to owner. Contact should be email link (wiki mailuser will be best, but if ppl wanna put up ther email here, who can stop them?), name should be a link to user page or forum profile.

I am thinking of listing the Booths, Shops and Displays for the towers also. Prop, how can this be integrated with yellow pages/shop listings, so there is no double work? We might need protection against vandalism there somewhere...

mrproper

Take it easy D, go slow, and think ahead. I used some excel sheets for this kind of job. You can copy over floors and fill them as needed. You might need an WYSIWYG HTML editor to convert from Excel to HTML clean code.

Dreamdancer

Thought of that. But as this is a wiki, it will get me into maintenance hell. Want the wiki to be the place data is stored, nowhere else. Editing is ok with the wiki, i can copy and edit here, if I keep my wiki code clean.

NO WAY I will EVER touch a WYSIWYG HTML editor! Or Excel, I use OOo, which even spits out rather clean XML. But thats not the point.

For the thinking ahead bit, I need more input on what data is needed and of interest to the users. I am myself not an estate buyer (yet).

About editing the tables as this gets bigger, you have experience editing with an external editor? Want to use JEdit, how does external editing work? WebDAV?

mrproper

Windows platforms here, and I don't use any external editor yet, I go really low level if I want to, Notepad, Fireworks, ACD See for image manipulation and Dreamweaver for quick clean HTML coding. For PHP, I code by hand, I get slow results but never get tangled.

Dreamdancer

JEdit: IMHO best multiplatform programmer's editor around, completely written in Java.

I cannot understand how anyone can use the words quick and clean in the same sentence as the word Dreamweaver. But everyone chooses their own tools, hehe.

I use The GImP mostly, and OOo. I am really into multiplatform, as you can see.

I will make my own experiments then, and report back.

Estate Count

Some interesting competition :P

http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28238

Hm... this White Pages might come in useful for this :D

To Do list

• Remove the 'CONTENTS box'
• Drop in some show/hide code in for the Areas & Towers
• ...

mrproper

Removing content box... done.

Show/hide :

<showhide>
 Visible heading+__HIDER__
  <hide>text here</hide>
 optional visible text
</showhide>

Dreamdancer

That ShowHide stuff... is the page still searchable when hidden?

I find it convenient to just hit Ctrl-f and type the person's name whose address I am searching for...

Dan

Apparently it is not, at least in Firefox... also note that instead of using <hide>, you can use <show> instead...

One solution would be to stuff information according to the place into different subpages e.g. White Pages/Eudoria/Atlas Haven West and have two versions of the White Pages, one with everything preset to <show>, the other with everything preset to <hide>, with both versions drawing data from the subpages.

Alternatively we could just have some custom javascript that auto opens / hides EVERYTHING on the page... :)

Dreamdancer

With the estimated size of the page, the "subpages" approach would be The Right Thing. I already thought of that. This encourages use of the Wiki search function, where one can retrieve all the necessary information without actually visiting the subpage. Expect page to be divided into subpages over the next few days, unless vetoed...

JD

Maybe we can copy the Search box over onto the White Pages that would encourage it's use!

Place it in a colored box/frame.

Dan

I suggest not using the wiki search (that searches over EVERYTHING in the wiki). Instead, we could have the two versions of White Pages as mentioned above which dynamically include all subpages...

Also what do you think about using a template instead for data? This would also make universal changes to layout much easier...

mrproper

I fail to see the problem, just press Ctrl+F in any browser and write your search keyword. If one really needs a real search engine, maybe a little google searchbox set for one page...

Dreamdancer

Not a problem, but hidden text is not searchable (FF/Win).

Please let us dump showhide for the White Pages, it is not clean (check this page in FF, try to edit this section and see where you end up...)

I do not think wiki search is a problem here, the google box is a nice solution.

mrproper

I have Edit Preview activated in my Preferences. I use Maxthon, wich combines the old ancient MSHTML MS engine for IE with extra ad removal, script, activex and exploits protection. So I basically get a better experience than using FF with no modules. And 4 times less used resources :P

Comparing the stats I can say:

Explorer 47.02% 
Firefox 26.25% 

I propose you continue subpages and includes. Make a subpages TOC with edit links for better management.

Dan

I agree with mrproper about subpages TOC. BTW, does anyone have any idea about what's Odd doing about CND estates?

Dream

I think, after I completed the listing these should be moved to White/Pages/Complete, and new "browse" pages created, so that the user can click thru to the wanted listing, without generating so much traffic.

Odd did an initial update of his listing a few weeks ago. See User:Sir odd/CND Data.

Dream

I will now move the White Pages to White Pages/Full Listing and create a browse page.

JD (July 13)

This is looking great mate, just keep going with what you are doing. We are going to need a Search Function specific for the white pages. What ever works!

Sir Odd

Finishing up Beta South for publishing, I've gone through Beta West and North, and Alpha Apartments but found none living there...I'll ask ND next time I see him if he has handed over estate deeds for those locations.

Location for apartments

Midori

Do we the need the location field for every apartment? Having the co-ordinates of the building and the floor and room letter seem enough to me (I doubt many people check the co-ordinates inside an apartment block). My main concern about this is that I have found the co-ordinates change slightly on each floor as the buildings are built on a spiral pattern. It is going to be a lot of effort to correct and add the co-ordinates for several thousand apartments.