[View] [Edit] [Attachments] [History] [Home] [Changes] [Search] [Help]

Swiki Help Guide

About Swiki

Welcome to this Swiki! A Swiki is a collaborative website; anyone can edit and create pages. While that may seem dangerous, it's also amazingly powerful. We all know quite a bit about writing and talking together; we tend not to mess up one another's space, we tend not to talk trash, and we tend to try to contribute.

Swiki is implemented in Squeak, a Smalltalk with a liberal license. It was inspired by Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb (Squeak + Wiki = Swiki). Swiki was created by Mark Guzdial's Collaborative Software Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Navigating the Swiki

If you are familiar with regular web browsing, it should be fairly easy to navigate through the Swiki. The only major difference are the special features:

[View] [View]: Pressing this button takes you back to simply viewing the page. References (the pages that link to this page) are shown there.
[Edit] [Edit]: This enables the user to edit the current page. Pressing on this button brings up a form where the text and title of the page can be changed. The changes made take effect when the save button is pressed. Also, the user can enter a password that will lock the page from others editing the page. Be careful to remember that password; otherwise, only the administrator (or at least their password) will unlock that page. Plus, entering your e-mail address in the appropriate space will send you a message whenever the page is edited. Please, check below (Editing Rules) to learn more about what kind of text is allowed.
[Edit(locked)] [Edit(locked)]: There is a lock on this page. In order to edit it, you will need either the page's assigned password or the administrator's password. With the administrator password, you can edit and save a locked page and retain the assigned password.
[Attachments] [Attachments]: With this feature, you can upload documents to the server. Attachments can be made to the page or the Swiki; page attachments can only be references from that page. To reference your attachment, insert *+myUploadedFileName+* into the page text, or chose the add a reference option when uploading and a reference will automatically be appended to the end of the page. Image (files ending in gif, jpg, jpeg, or png) references are inlined.
[History] [History]: This shows the different versions of the page through time. Since pages are editable, it sometimes is useful to look at what was previously on the page or to correct a mistake.
[Home] [Home]: Pressing this button takes you to the front page of this Swiki (the first page).
[Changes] [Changes]: This feature lists the pages by the last time they were edited in reverse order. This is very useful for finding what's new on the site.
[Search] [Search]: Using this feature, you can search for all pages that might contain certain word(s) or phrases.
[Help] [Help]: Pressing this button takes you back to this page.
... Guessing the URL: Occasionally, it will happen that you know the name of the page you want to go to (even approximately), but you don't know the number and you don't want to try to find your way there through searches or browsing. For these times, you might want to guess using the URL. Simply type the words you remember from the page name in concatenated form after the swiki address; you can separate words by capitalizing the first letter of each word (a la Smalltalk). The Swiki will return the first match it finds to those words. For example, mySwiki/iWantCandy might bring up a page named 'The candy I want for Halloween'. Of course, you aren't guaranteed to make a match, or you might get the wrong match; in that case, it's back to the drawing board.
... Rendering: the administrator has the ability to render the swiki into a normal web site. This is sometimes helpful when reliability and portability are important. This feature is not accessible to the normal viewer, but it can be found here. Note: rendering takes a while and uses up the resources, so it may be good to render when traffic is low.

Editing Rules

Swiki has its own simple editing rules. To link to a page, surround the page's title by *s (i.e. *My Page*); if the page does not already exist, a create button appears next to the new title; click on it to create the new page. The extensive list below documents all the editing features; these features are meant to enhance your use, but you do not need them to get started.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I create a new page?

Go to the page which you want to link it from. Edit that page. In the text put *My New Page Name*. When you save the page, a create link shows up next to My New Page. Click on that and the new page is created. In this way, you haven't just created a page, you've also created a link to it so others can find it.

How can I delete a file I've uploaded?

The simple answer is you can't. But, you can upload a file with the same name and that file will be referenced in its place. If it is really necessary to delete the uploaded file, contact your system administrator.

What is an Edit Conflict and what should I do when I get that?

An edit conflict is what happens when the server thinks someone else has saved the page before you. Thus, if you continued your save, you would delete their contributions. You are given both your version and the last saved one and asked to integrate the two. A real edit conflict happens rarely; however, some browsers (mainly MSIE) have problems with cacheing when you hit the browser's back button. If this is the case, just press the save button when you get the conflict. The best way to avoid this is not to hit the back button to re-edit a page.

I accidentally messed up a page. How can I fix it?

Every version of the page is saved. Go to the damaged page. Click on the history button. Find the last version of the page that was okay. Now, open up another window for editing the page and move the old content to there. Save.

Why won't my image file show up in my page?

There could be several reasons for this. First, you need to save your image as either a GIF, JPEG, or PNG; other image formats (BMPs, PDFs, picts, etc.) are not handled by most browsers. Secondly, the file has to have the correct extension ('.gif', '.jpeg', '.jpg', or '.png') or the server will not recognize it as an image; it is not possible to simply change the file format by adding a different extension.

How do I color my text?

You can use any HTML you want. A common way to add color is to use the FONT tag. For instance, you can make your text green by doing <font color="green">green text</font>.

How do I center things?

If you put what you want centered inbetween <p align=center> and </p>, it will be centered.

Powered by Comanche
Comanche 5.0 / Swiki 1.3
propella home