Styles documentation update

[foxfirefey]

So, as a recap after about a week of work, there are now two main documentation bodies springing up for S2. I think there's currently enough space both for beginner and more advanced level documentation within those two sets.

S2 Guide: The Language Tutorial is filling out nicely as a first draft. However, the more I work at it in its current state, the more I think it's going to need to be rearranged for better flow at teaching beginners. The Style System Overview has a little bit of content, but is still kind of clunky. But the Troubleshooting section has some pretty awesome stuff right now, if I do say so myself. Haven't yet started on the Core2 Overview, Backend, Glossary, or Language Reference (a more concise version of the Language Tutorial, for cheatsheet checking or referral by people who already know programming).

S2 Cookbook: This starts out with a testbed layout that lets people have a really simple environment to test out code bits. A couple example pages starting to get filled in are strings and on Dates.

Other miscellanea:

* matgb has pointed out that the advanced page points to defunct documentation URLs. What's worse, the layout editor does, too. Hopefully we can point it at the S2 guide instead, or the core2 layer documentation.
* Doing this documentation has also given me several ideas for built in functions to add. For instance, S2 has a split function for strings, but no "join" function for string arrays. Why is there no join function! Does anybody have any input on that?
* Some people have already been diving in to tweaking and editing! Thank you murklins and azurelunatic for your assistance. And thank you everybody who gave your input on the last post on this topic!
* ninetydegrees has some suggestions up regarding this area: Your Layers page: redesign layers table as a tree , Styles: Add links to Your Layers, and Improve the S2 Compiler. They're making me think that instead of wee changes, each area should just go through a redesign. What do you envision the advanced customization area operating like?

Comments

[foxfirefey]

Maybe for the summary, it could have a link to the current style and current layers it was composed of instead? "Currently, your journal is using..."

And also I'm trying to whip up a glossary, so I could totally crib from your post maybe.

[matgb]

MAkes sense. Had another look earlier. First section should be a lot less, well, insulting. Explain the basics, link to a help comm and the styles guide, let people know the very very basics.

For a lot of people, they just want to copy in some bespoke code (like the share this I'm working on that miss_s_b wants), so the "go away" bit is really really bad.

Second section should expand on that, link to proper wiki pages, style guides, etc, but also explain what a style is, and what layers are, with the different types.

"Your journal appearance is determined by the current Style you have running. a Style is made up of a number of Layers. These can be public Layers from the supported Styles, or your own custom layers created below. All styles will need a Layout layer, which will call the basic functions from the Core, and will also create an Auto layer, which, really, you don't want to touch from here, it takes all its data from the Wizard you've already used. You can also create a User layer, which can override or rearrange Core or Layout functions, there are some worked eaxamples on the Wiki here"

Wording something like that will explain it fairly quickly while giving enough detail that it's comprehensible, and people can go look up the rest if/when they need it. The crucial bit about User layers and simple overrides is the important thing.

You can then just have a column for Layers, and a column for Styles. I don't know what the limits are for how many of each you can have, but unless it's massive, you can probably delete the sub pages. If it is a lot, then only display current and X most recent, with links to the full sub page?

Replace the 'delete' boxes with a checkbox and mass delete button, don't suppose it'd be possible to have mass editing with them forcing new tags?

Slightly clearer instructions on the Styles page (or column) saying what you need to do, make sure you can always copy across public layers, and probably do the same for the Layers section.

I'd also want a basic version of the Styles page, without the editing setup, somewhere in the theme select area of the basic setup, knowing you can switch back and keep your basics easily is something a lot of people don't actually know...

My post is here:
getting_started | Creating and using custom layers

It's very much a stream of consiousness, but it makes sense.

[foxfirefey]

Rather than remove the delete button, I think ninetydegrees' AJAX suggestion might work more nicely. (For me, the trouble with the many checkboxes solution is how it might make people have to click and checkbox and do a lot of scrolling to delete just one layer/style).

Paid users can have 50 styles and 150 layers. Premium paid gets 100 styles and 300 layers.

[matgb]

Ah, OK, definitely want to limit what's displayed if we do add Layers onto the landing page then.

And yes, checkboxes at that level would be excessive, and AJAX has got a lot less annoying these days, so that'll work.

[ninetydegrees]

"Your journal appearance is determined by the current Style you have running. a Style is made up of a number of Layers. These can be public Layers from the supported Styles, or your own custom layers created below. All styles will need a Layout layer, which will call the basic functions from the Core, and will also create an Auto layer, which, really, you don't want to touch from here, it takes all its data from the Wizard you've already used. You can also create a User layer, which can override or rearrange Core or Layout functions, there are some worked eaxamples on the Wiki here"

I really, really like the way you've phrased this. I'll rephrase the bit about auto layers always being part of a style because it's not true. You've got Wizard layers if you've used the wizard. :) Any non-custom styles will have Theme layers, though.

[matgb]

I was thinking of how if you've got Links and Text, it copies that across into an auto layer, I've never bothered to find out how it's done.

But if it makes sense, that's good.

[ninetydegrees]

Text will go into the Wizard layer; links won't. They're independent. There's a bug to make text independent as well so that you can keep it if you switch styles.

[matgb]

Ah, excellent. That's acutally quite important for me at the moment, I'm doing alternate styles for those weird people that find dark backgrounds harder to read that'll work for non-logged in non-DW types, so want it as similar as possible, but migraine inducingly pale instead.

So that actually answers a question I hadn't looked up yet, danke.

[ninetydegrees]

You're most welcome!