Help for User:DaveNF2G

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DaveNF2G

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I have built a table of frequencies used at Albany (NY) International Airport in my Wiki sandbox and I need some help with the coding. I have placed notes at the top of the table with my questions/problems.

Also, I would like to help establish a new category for DMR systems, particularly non-trunked ones. I am analyzing a local MotoTRBO repeater and would like to post what I am finding so others can make use of it and collaborate on further analysis.
 

ka3jjz

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I'll let QDP2012 handle the table - he's better than me at that, frankly. I like to keep my tables simple...

Anyway establishing a new category is quite simple - it's a 2 step process.

Step 1 is to name the category - at the bottom of your article put this code - (I'm making up the category name, you can call it whatever you wish)

[[Category:New York Mototrbo Systems]]

The 2 brackets (left and right) are to the right of 'P' on your keyboard (I don't know the proper name for 'em - I just call them 'square brackets'. Don't use the squiggly brackets - they're used for template definitions.)

Now that category will show up red. You need to now do the 2nd step - give the category a description. Click on it and put some descriptive text in there. The category is now set up and ready to use

I'd suggest putting this category up as a link on the Albany NY page...

Albany County (NY) - the RR wiki

by using coding like this;

*[[:Category:New York Mototrbo Systems|NY Mototrbo Systems]]

Then to avoid the orphans issue (just assigning an article to a category doesn't solve this issue, unfortunately - it's a MediaWiki thing....) I'd link the individual article(s) on the airport page. This way you have a generic method (your category) and a specific method (your articles) that users can use to find your data.

Mike
 
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DaveNF2G

Guest
Thanks for the responses. I'll see what I can learn.

My space is currently taken up with the airport info. How would I start a second article?
 

ka3jjz

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You can do one of two things - link to your second article from your workspace (just like you would from any other article), or store away your current coding, wipe your space and start new. If you edit the current Albany county article, you can easily learn how to do this. Any of those town names, for example, are links to another article. The new link would show up in red (like a 404) because the wiki can't find it. All you need to do is click on it, and code away.

If you do decide to back up your coding, be sure to do it as a text, not a Word, file. Word likes to put all sorts of funky symbols that are a royal pain to clean up. Mike
 

QDP2012

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Good morning Dave,

After looking at your table's wiki-code, it seems that only a few table-row ( |- ) tags were missing on some of the spanned rows. Everything else seemed to be fairly well squared-away. Good job with the minutia of wiki-programming.

As part of analyzing the table, and for your convenience when adding future data, several templates have been created (in no particular order) to help separate the table-formatting from the actual data.

Each template contains the formatting-commands for either an individual table-row or an individual set of spanned rows.

For testing purposes, your user-page has been updated with the modified table. and related templates created in your user-space.

When you are ready to put the article into the main wiki-space, if you want some help setting up the official templates, let me know. (It's usually easier to set-up the templates after the article's final name has been chosen, because the templates' names should be based upon the article's name, since the templates are specific to just the one article.)

Regarding the footnote/reference feature you were trying to use, it seems that the feature is active in Wikipedia, but is not active in the RR Wiki. So, the next best thing was to just manually number the footnotes/references, which has been done. There is a way to link each of the embedded superscript numbers to the footnote/reference section, so that clicking the embedded number will jump to the footnote/reference section. If you are interested in using that approach, you can wrap the embedded number with a wiki-link to the page's name and the suffix "#Notes" (the name of the section-header above the footnotes) like this:
Code:
AIRSIDE<sup>[2]</sup>
would become:
Code:
AIRSIDE<sup>[[[User:DaveNF2G#Notes|2]]]</sup>

If I didn't get the table-layout as you expected, or if you have any questions, please let me know.

Also, the article's wiki-code is formatted to be easily read in an external text-editor (like notepad), not in the wiki's little editting-box.

Edit: As you probably have seen with other templates, these templates' code is not all visible in the template-preview. To view all of a template's code, you must click the Edit button and look at it that way.

Edit 2: You will notice that only a single table-row was used for the "Delta", "SouthWest", and "UPS" rows. For those rows, it seemed most efficient to simply use the html-break <br/> within a single cell to put the data on separate lines within that cell. If you want me to help change these single table-rows into multiple spanned rows, let me know.

Hope this helps,
 
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DaveNF2G

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Wow! The table looks perfect now. I think the footnotes are OK without hyperlinking because the table is not all that long.

I have removed my comments from the top of the page and updated the date on the table. It is ready to become an official part of the Wiki. I will do that from home as there are no interruptions there. (Well, except for playful cats.)

After that, I will create the other page that I intend to publish.

Deepest thanks to QDP2012 and to Mike for your invaluable help.
 

QDP2012

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You're certainly welcome. If we can help with anything else, please let us know..
 

ka3jjz

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Bowie, Md.
Not a problem Dave. I must admit you have some courage to take on one of the more complex functions in the wiki - tables - for your first major article.

Just a question - since you have some TRBO frequencies in there, are you planning some method to catalog the color code?

The table looks great. Mike
 
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DaveNF2G

Guest
I haven't determined anything other than the fact that they are using TRBO on those frequencies yet. If I can get decent signals at home, then I will run DSD or DSDPlus against them and see what comes up.

The table was not as hard as it might appear. I started out with an HTML table and did a lot of search+replace.
 
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DaveNF2G

Guest
OK, I understand the effect of adding the Category directive to the page. But how is the article name derived? What should I do about the templates, if anything?
 

ka3jjz

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If you're talking about how the article gets named in the category, the short answer is that it simply places the name of the article in the category listing automatically. Apart from putting in a category name, you don't need to do anything else.

You should also know that we've got quite a number of categories already mapped and actively used. It's policy to have an article belong to more than one category where possible, as it makes that article easier to find and read. In your case, your article would fit in our Aviation, Airports, Businesses and Business Frequencies categories. You can add to that list without much effort at all on your part..

I see that the template that QDP build is associated with your user name at the moment. For now that's fine- but at some point the code should be moved to the common template area, and given an unique name. Then it's a simple matter of changing every reference to that new common name - which is easy to do in most text editors. This should happen before your article is 'published' to the public (it would still work even if it wasn't, but all our templates are in a single spot anyway...). .

Mike
 
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QDP2012

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...What should I do about the templates, if anything?

If it helps avoid confusion, tells us here what you plan to name the article when you publish it in the main Wiki.

From that name, an abbreviation can be derived that would be used to create public templates similar to those in your user-space. That way, it's clear(er) that the group of templates relates only to that article (or set of articles).

An example:

It you chose to name the article "A Big Table of Airport Information", then I would recommend using initials from that page name (ABTAI) to create and name these five templates in the public template-space:

ABTAI_RowFmt1 ....... which would be a copy of the code in ........ User: DaveNF2G/RowFmt1
ABTAI_RowFmt2 ....... which would be a copy of the code in ........ User: DaveNF2G/RowFmt2
ABTAI_RowFmt3 ....... which would be a copy of the code in ........ User: DaveNF2G/RowFmt3
ABTAI_RowFmt4 ....... which would be a copy of the code in ........ User: DaveNF2G/RowFmt4
ABTAI_RowFmt5 ....... which would be a copy of the code in ........ User: DaveNF2G/RowFmt5

And then, in the wiki-code for the article's page, use a text-editor to replace "User: DaveNF2G/" with "ABTAI_", and save the code into the newly created page named "A Big Table of Airport Information".
This way, the published article uses published templates, and you can still edit the draft-article in your profile using the templates in your profile, if you are planning any major ("big") changes to the table, it's shape, it's length, etc. Minor (or major) changes can be easily done directly to the published article, if that's what you wish. But, having the one in your user-space let's you develop, using trial-and-error methods as needed, without impacting the published article or its templates.

Edit 4:
Your draft article is for "Albany International Airport". If you plan to develop other articles for other airports, but plan to use the same exact templates so that the tables behave similarly, then maybe a more generalized abbreviation would be appropriate for the template-names, so that their purpose is clear, but also so that it is clear that they (the templates) apply to a set of multiple articles.

...just a thought.​

Edit:
I use this procedure for creating templates. Find the page/article that needs to use the template. Click "Edit" button on that article to go into edit mode. At an appropriate place in the article, put the template-call statement (similar to this: )
Code:
{{ABTAI_RowFmt1 | value 1 | value 2 | value 3 | value 4 | ... etc. }}
and place similar calls for each of the needed templates, so that every needed template has been called at least once in the article.

Then scroll-down to the bottom of the Edit screen, and click the "Preview" button. This renders the page (albeit messed-up since templates don't yet exist).

Scroll down to the bottom of the preview page and find the list of template-names (in red-text), with the word "edit" beside each. Right-click on the "edit" (open in new tab/window), and build each template successfully, before saving the main article. Keep (repeatedly) previewing the article as the templates are built, to make sure the article invokes the templates properly. When all works well, save the article.

Of course, it should go without saying that a back-up copy of the actual wiki-code for the article and for each template is saved somewhere else using a text-editor, so none is lost if the browser has a hiccup (like having your log-in timeout and close your edit session).

Hopefully, this explanation is not too confusing. Let me know if it is unclear, and I'll try to rephrase.

Edit 2:
You can also create pages/templates in your user-space using a similar technique. Go to your User: DaveNF2G page; click Edit; put either a
Code:
[[User:DaveNF2G/My_Second_Article]]
(to create a new page) or
Code:
{{User:DaveNF2G/My_Next_Template}}
to create a template. (Please notice the square brackets [[ ]] vs curly braces {{ }} difference.) (Adjust the names as needed.)

In preview mode, this will render a red-text link which you then right-click (open in new tab/window) and create a new page/template as desired.

Again, sorry if grammar is lousy. Distractions exist at the moment. If you have questions, let us know.


Edit 3:
...But how is the article name derived?...
The article name is whatever you choose it to be. To create a new article, go to its parent page (like the related county page), click edit, and in the appropriate location, put your desired page name in-between double square brackets. To create the example page above, go to the parent (county) page and add this link
Code:
[[A Big Table of Airport Information]]
Then either in preview-mode or after saving the parent (county) page, you will see a red-link. Click the red-link to edit/create the new article page named "A Big Table of Airport Information". Copy/Paste the appropriate wiki-code into the newly created (empty) page, and then preview it. When previewed successfully, then save it.​



Hope this helps,
 
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ka3jjz

Wiki Admin Emeritus
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I'm sure QDP and others have their favorite text editor, but mine is Notepad ++, and it's totally free. You can get it from here...

Notepad++ Home

It's very powerful, does editing of Java and other languages, macros, etc. Not much of a resource hog at all - I can comfortably run it along side Chrome and it won't even blink on an old Netbook

Mike
 
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DaveNF2G

Guest
My intention is to name the page "Albany International Airport" and the abbreviation I would use for templates, etc., would be KALB (the airport's ICAO code).

If I want to link the table to the Albany County, NY, section of the database, would I just add something like "New York: Albany" to the list of categories?
 

QDP2012

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My intention is to name the page "Albany International Airport" and the abbreviation I would use for templates, etc., would be KALB (the airport's ICAO code).

If I want to link the table to the Albany County, NY, section of the database, would I just add something like "New York: Albany" to the list of categories?

Per the Wiki standard naming convention, the page name would be (without quotes)::

"Albany International Airport (ALB) Albany County (NY)"

This Wiki page already exists, at: Albany International Airport (ALB) Albany County (NY)

This means that it would be best for you to edit the existing page and to add your table below the existing data.

The existing Wiki page has its own DB sub-page under Albany in the DB: Albany International Airport (ALB)

The DB-page's "Wiki" button goes to the existing Wiki page.

Naming the templates with the prefix "KALB_" makes sense to me.
From an admin-perspective, Bob/W9BU and Mike/ka3jjz , what are your thoughts?

Hope this helps,
 
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DaveNF2G

Guest
Aha! I didn't know about the existing page, which actually contains graphics that were ported over from the NF2G Scannist Pages. Ironic, ain't it? LOL.

That makes things easier, I think.
 

AK9R

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Naming the templates with the prefix "KALB_" makes sense to me.
From an admin-perspective, Bob/W9BU and Mike/ka3jjz , what are your thoughts?
Are these templates going to be unique to this Wiki article? If so, then what you suggest is probably OK.

Are they going to be usable in other articles? If so, then what you suggest is probably not OK
 

ka3jjz

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Yep I agree. But since the template is supposed to be used for Dave's article only, I think we're safe.

If someone else needs it, simply clone it. We've done that enough with other templates....Mike
 
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DaveNF2G

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My thought was to make them unique to the Albany Airport article, but if I should ever create a similar article for another airport, then I would clone them to another set of names.
 
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