[Scummvm-devel] Wiki Editing

[Max Horn]

Hi Metafox, (CC: scummvm-devel)

it's good to see that you are working on enhancing the game entries  
on the Wiki, as per my suggestions on <http://wiki.scummvm.org/ 
index.php/Documentation/TODO#Enhancing_the_.27Game.27_wiki_entries>.

Maybe others are interested in this, too. One problem with that doc  
TODO is that it was not yet shown to the rest of the team, and some  
people may have different opinions on some of the suggestions there.  
I hereby would like to encourage everybody to edit that wiki page,  
and/or voice opinions on the matter here. Speak up now or be silent  
forever *ggg*.


Right now, I have these remarks:

Compatibility tables
====================
The compatibility table on e.g. <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/ 
Loom> is IMHO not all that helpful. The extra detail with the  
variants in it doesn't help most people, but may confuse many; it  
just obscures the actual information (that no compatibility problems  
are known).

Some people may argue about the usefulness of a per-game  
compatibility table anyway. Well, I say: People do want to know  
either "which games will work on my device" or "will this and that  
game work on my device". The former questions is best answered with a  
compat table on the platform page of the relevant port, *assuming* it  
lists all relevant games individually. Which they usually don't.  
Hence the idea to show some compatibility info on the game's page, too.

But when you start listing every variant in a separate row, you then  
should continue to list compatibility on every device, of which there  
are dozens (for WinCE, Palm and Symbian, you really want to inform on  
each device individually), so you'd get a *HUUUUGE* list, with tons  
of duplication compared to the platform pages. Ugh. Very hard to  
maintain, and possibly very confusing to our users.

Hence, I think a much briefer overview would be sufficient and  
possibly more helpful. Like: "This game should work fine on all  
platforms officially supported by ScummVM, with the exception of X,  
Y, Z [with links to the platform compat pages]. For more details on  
why this is so, refer to A and B." (the latter only added if  
available, of course).
As an example, Broken Sword runs on most ports, except for some of  
the smaller ones due to resolution or memory problems.


Tools usage
===========
As for the tools usage: "The utility is used in the following manner:  
'compress_scumm_sou monster.sou '" is obviously a bit short, but of  
course we can't do all this in one go. But my suggestion would be:  
Let's create a "ScummVM Tools Usage" page or so, and let the game's  
page link to that. I.e. only keep this sentence:
  "The monster.sou file can be compressed with the utility  
compress_scumm_sou which is found in the [ScummVM tools package]" and  
make "compress_scumm_sou" a link to the "compress_scumm_sou" section  
on the tool's usage page. That section in turn could be populated  
with the data found in the README on compress_scumm_sou right now,  
possibly augmented by the usage output of the "compress_scumm_sou" tool

The top of that page, have some general remarks on the tools, like  
that they require external tools like lame and vorbis tools; also  
maybe a link to existing frontends for them.


Misc
====
On <http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Loom> in the Data Files  
section, it says: "Amiga, FM-TOWNS**, Macintosh, PC EGA, PC Demo" but  
the "**" is never explained.




Bye,
Max