Moderator: Thorsten
), or one per subject ...
I know that and I'm thinking about a better solution.Administration of records needs to be hierachical so that you can navigate by categories to the topics contained within. WIth lots of topics, the current navigation is mildly tedious ...
You mean something like related articles? This is planned for 1.6, too.The system should be able to produce a matrix of the FAQ topics and the keywords that are associated with them. Again, one of the primary purposes would be to assist in the management of the system. More importantly it would let you make sure they were all spelled correctly and possibly make the lists more consistent. Ideally, this would be a wider page with the "words" (phrases) that are keywords lined up vertically with the text of the topic on one side so that it would be possible to see if there were other keywords
Once of the concepts that I am trying to "flesh out" are ways to aid the traveler in the site. We typically set down the keywords we know and love, but the newcomer has nary a clue as to what we call things, with the glossary with these as hard copy pages they can skim for related terms. An adjunct might be to expand the keyword concept with primary keywords that are glossary entries with alternative words that are not part of the official lexicon but may be used by a newcomer.
There is no spell checker in PHP by default. With version 5.1 PHP will have a spell checker by default so when I could add one easily. And please don't forget I have to support over 25 languages.Spell checking. I am a terrible speller. So, a way to spell check the content is needed. One simple mechanism might to be to export some sort of dump of all the FAQ topics, allow spell checking using a standard word processor in text mode only, and then to restore the content with the corrected contents.
phpMyFAQ 1.5 support mod_rewrite, so you have "static" pages in this version.Another reason to do these "complete" dumps to a single page is that this particular page can be used to validate the links used within the topics and glossary entries.
phpMyFAQ 1.5 supports DocBook XML export, so you can even print a book with the content of your FAQ.Additionally, mechanism to make "static" pages can be used to make a printable "book" of the FAQ/Glossary as many users may desire the capability to take the material to bed to read at their leasure.
The GIF image wasn't supported in PHP for some years and the PDF class we use does not support GIF.When I try an export of my FAQ to PDF I get a unsupported image type "GIF" ... this may be an intrinsic limitation of the system, but it should not cause a complete failure of the export. A graceful fail mode would be nicer. Also, if possible, the location of the error would be helpful so that the problem could be corrected. In general I think the image support in phpMyFAQ is weak. Forcing the user to use your image tool (which stinks in my opinion - hey, autism is calling a spade a shovel) severely impacts on the utility of the tool. What if I have to use GIF? I grant that png and jpg are better, but ... just a thought ...
Sure, you can add and edit the description of categories.Category management does not have a simple mechanism to edit the description of the category.
Just edit the style.css file and change the font size global.Default font in the editor is not set to, say 10 point, but defaults to 8. Or am I missing something?
WOrse, if I want to make a change now, I have to look at 300+ entries one at a time ...
phpMyFAQ 1.5 supports one FAQ record in various categories.There should be a way to either "clone" a FAQ entry (for example, open editor on a topic/theme, click on the "Clone" button and the topic opened is closed and a new identical copy of the topic is created allowing the saving of the topic, perhaps as a diffferent topic (new question) or with slightly altered content under a new topic), or the entries themselves should allow the adminsitrator to "share" the content of the topic. WIth topic "sharing" the two questions are written and point to a "detached" content filed. This would best be implemented as the content being a separate record
I try to make it bigger.The editor window needs to be made larger. I would almost suggest that it opens in a separate window. The panel is only good for small topics, adding any image of significant size is nearly impossible even though it is intended to be WYSIWYG.
You can already export your whole FAQ in the admin section.It should be possible to create a complete output of the content as a pdf, or printer friendly version.
This is something every user can do by himself if he like to add the W3C logo.Each faq page should have the the W3C testing logo and the pages should be compatible with the "strict" ruleset. Or there should be a global option to select the ruleset (If made to strict, it will also be compatible with transitional).
Good idea! I'll add this feature as soon as possible.FAQ navigation should have next, previous navigation icons (or links) for the next topic and the next topic grouping (also previous).
This is on our TODO list for 1.5.0+.There is no way to re-order the sub-categories you can add them, or delete them, rename them, but not to move them.
hm, I don't know... I think about it.Having a secondary publishing capability would also be nice. At the moment you have a single output format for the tool with sidebar menu navigation. WHat about the other "style" where a category appears as a single page and the content is shown/hidden with "twisties" of +/- signs.
I know that and the designer of the style sheets is working on a better inline documentation in the style sheet.Your color style sheet has a reasonable set of color choices, but I tried to modify it and basically had to give it up as too hard to change. There are limited to no notes on a mechanism to change this portion of the system. It might be a nice touch to see a second style sheet that has the contrast of dark background with light highlights to one with light background and darker highlights.
Even if offered only on your documentation page ... The reason I mention this is that I have nary a clue (though I have some experience using style sheets) to make a good one for this system.
what folder did you renamed?If you want to move/rename the base folder for phpMyFAQ it seems to screw up the templates seriously ...
This is on our TODO list for 1.5.0+.The ability to sort the Themes within each category should be allowed as an option. For example, If I want to document each error and status message I have no idea of the order as I create the entries, yet there is no way (at least that I know of) that allows me to sort the list as a default. Also, moving themes in the output list does not seem to be possible. It should be possible to change the order manually also ...
You're right but I want to improve the whole record administration so I fix this when the new administration is ready.The sort of records in administration of records does not match the order in the category management.
You mean something like related articles? This is planned for 1.6, too
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Related in the sense that the navigation should be via the key words. I am not sure I am understanding how your keywords work. Because I did a limited number of tests I may still be missing something. But, search seemed to be on the content, not on the keywords. But, the glossary MAY fix this, if the linking goes in both directions, so, as you add references from the FAQ to the glossary, the glossary links back to the FAQ that contain the keyword. Note that this should be a "hidden" link set as some of them could be quite large (in my case this will be certainly true).
It means if your webserver supports mod_rewrite you can enable this in phpMyFAQ and you'll have "static" pages like www.example.com/faq/category_1.htmlphpMyFAQ 1.5 support mod_rewrite, so you have "static" pages in this version.
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If I knew what the heck you are talking aout, I would be able to answer this ...
I'll think about it. You mean a overview for every category?Sure, you can add and edit the description of categories.
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Yes, by looking at each one individually, I was thinking more of a listing of the name/description on one page so you can look at them in total, not in an isolated, one at a time manner.
Yes, true ... however, I am thinking of it as a base feature of the product. As in, we also do "x" with support for W3C. More importantly, for me to be able to test the pages I would have to change the coding of your pages to make them compatible. I am reluctant to do this, if I do, then I am not using the baseline code. I grant that it is a MINOR point, but it might be a selling point and world not cost much to make strict work.
To an extent, especially if you are using style sheets for formatiing is that you can move things around through the use of the style sheets. Also, since the system is code making code, changes to the code output can substantially change the look and feel. I had, at one time, some scripts that allowed me to generate Oracle compatible scripts, making small (well, ok, substantial) changes to the scripts allowed me to also generate SQL Server scripts.
My top level folder is named faq and I wanted to rename that to something else, but when I did the system stopped working. I am not sure what or why ...
If I wish to add my own style sheet to the FAQ there is not a "hook" that lets me do this easily. In other words, why don't we have a place where we can easily add things like a style sheet, functions, etc as offsets and file names? At a minimum, I want to add my base style sheet to the mix (though I don't know where that would be most effectively done, and also my standard PHP functions. ideally, we should have one "hook" for each, better would be some sort of linkage where we could add several (an array?).