[Scummvm-devel] Organisation of information on the wiki

[Thierry Crozat (Yahoo! Mail)]

Hi all,

I might as well start by presenting myself. I have been lurking in  
the shadows of this list for some times but never introduced myself.
In short, I am not a member of the ScummVM team per-say, but I have  
been given a wiki account recently and started working on the manual  
(under the name of criezy). My only other contribution to the project  
that is worth mentioning is the patch I  wrote more than two years  
ago to add support for the mac version of BS1. I am a full time  
software engineer (working in C++/C/Fortran) and when I come back  
home I am usually not very motivated to write more code.


Now, to come back to the subject of my mail, I have a question  
regarding organisation of platforms specific stuff on the wiki.  
Should installations instructions (both for ScummVM and for games) be  
on the platform page (as this is the case for the iPhone and PSP)?  
Should I copy them in the manual as well or only link to them?
Currently the manual has a copy of the iPhone installation  
instructions but point to the platform page for the PSP (because the  
instructions are quite long for that device).
iPhone page: http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/IPhone
PSP page: http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/PlayStation_Portable
Installation instructions in the Manual: http://wiki.scummvm.org/ 
index.php/User_Manual/Getting_started#Installation

The same issue occurs with controls (for the moment I have only put  
links to the platform pages in the manual for those though - see  
http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/User_Manual/ 
Running_and_Using_ScummVM#Hotkeys).

I am not to keen of duplication as that make more pages to update and  
may lead to inconsistencies.

I propose to have on each platform page the installation and control  
instructions and only keep links to those in the manual. What do you  
think?
Or should the manual be as self contained as possible (for example if  
we want to distribute a PDF version of it with ScummVM)?

I have also a more technical question: I updated some screenshots of  
the ScummVM Launcher (with the new Load button) on friday night,  
however the thumbnails have not been updated (see http:// 
wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/User_Manual/ 
Running_and_Using_ScummVM#The_Launcher). Are they supposed to be  
updated automatically after some time? Do I need to do something?


Metafox,

Concerning the question on the game pages, I don't see anything  
missing on the Nippon Safe Inc. page. On a more general note though,  
I find the platforms list in the table a bit confusing. I suppose it  
lists all the platforms for which the game was released, but then  
which versions of the game are supported by ScummVM? For Nippon Safe  
this is all of them but this is not clearly visible on that page. For  
Indy 3 I think the Macintosh version still has issues, but this is  
not noted on the game page. For the 7th Guest I suppose the macintosh  
version is not supported since it uses a different engine, but again  
it is not noted on the game page. These are just examples, but maybe  
we could decide for all games that were released on more than one  
platform to have a game variant section that clearly state which ones  
are supported by ScummVM, which ones are are partially supported and  
which ones are not. Or maybe color code the platforms on which it was  
released in the table (e.g. green, yellow, red), but the user might  
not know what this means.

Also I jumped on the wiki ship quite late and I suppose the questions  
you have been asking recently on the game compatibility are similar  
to what I am asking (i.e. should it be on the game pages? should it  
be on the platform pages? should it be on a single page with all the  
info?).
I think having them on the game pages (summarised as you did for  
Nippon Safes Inc.) is good. And having just a link to the game  
datafiles is sufficient as well.

I don't like the platform overview page. It might be good for  
developers but is a bit overwhelming and difficult to understand for  
users.

But then there is nothing else for the users to answer the question  
"I have a dreamcast, what games can I play?" (dreamcast is just an  
example), except when there is also a list of supported games on the  
platform page (e.g. the iPhone page has that, but what is the  
difference between "Fully Playable" and "Completed"?).
Maybe what we could just have on the page for each platform is just a  
sentence like "The PlayStation 2 port does not support Curse of  
Monkey Island. All other games *should* work fine, although they have  
not all been tested.", i.e. list only known issues.

Thierry

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