Welcome

Welcome to uDig Users Guide - this space is used to write online for the uDig application. These pages are "source code", please don't rename them or things will break.

Example of breakable things:

  • The Table of Contents pages --->
  • Context sensitive help (usually this is the F1 key)

While composing online help is not the intended purpose of Confluence, it does allow everyone to play. So if you see a problem with our online help please comment or add a fix. See the next section for details.

Table of Contents

Online help is indexed by a series of TOC, or table of contents, files.

Any pages mentioned by these xml files will be available as online help in uDig.

Note: this Home page is not included (and thus does not need translation)

The Eclipse help system
DEV:Plugin Help
Eclipse Online Help Tutorial 101

How to help?

This English version of the uDig User guide provides the 'structure' for the online help. This structure depends on the uDig source code that is used to provide context sensitive help (on most plaforms this is the F1 key). This same structure is used by the other languages and the table of contents files.

Here is how you can help to improve the user guide:

Any help is appreciated, the next section gives some guidelines for editing pages.

Appearance and Guidelines

These online help pages do not display the page title from the wiki, the page title (always in english) is used as a reference point for the uDig application to provide context sensitive help.

Instead pages may provide their own heading, if indeed they want one.

h2. Example Page

Some content. Try not to include many links in your content,
Save it for the related sections.

{related}concepts{related}
[A Concept Page]

{related}reference{related}
[Eclipse Help|http://help.eclipse.org/help30]

As you can see above we have defined several users macros, these provide to correct (language specific) heading for related reference, concepts and tasks.

The convention is to use these macros at the bottom of the page, rather the overload the documented with numerous inline links. The macros are to be used in the order: concepts, tasks, reference.

Related Macros

{related}concepts{related}
{related}tasks{related}
{related}reference{related}

Getting Started

Eclipse online help 101:
This section typically contains broad overview information. The Workbench User Guide provides two tutorials in this section, namely, Basic Tutorial and Team Tutorial. They mainly present high-level information to introduce the information in the rest of the guide.

Overview information and Tutorials. Should not contain any related sections.

Concepts

High-Level description of ideas, architecture. Provides background information to understand what is going on.

Eclipse online help 101:
Conceptual topics present an in-depth discussion of ideas, architecture, technologies, solutions, or processes. Concepts are high-level descriptions of the schema and functions of the plug-in tool. This section helps provide a general understanding of how the plug-in functions. For example, in the Workbench User Guide, the Concepts section includes a discussion of what perspectives and views are and how they relate to one another.

Additionally, conceptual topics should not contain procedures, which are documented in task topics (Tasks section). Therefore, use conceptual topics to provide a comprehensive discussion of the processes or options behind a procedure, and include links to related task topics._

Tasks

How to do something. Literally an introduction followed by a step by step procedure.

Eclipse online help 101:
Task topics tell users how to do something. Users who access task topics typically are focused on the job at hand, so provide them with a procedural presentation of the information they require. Task descriptions are step-by-step instructions for performing specific actions and tasks in the platform. For example, the Tasks section contains step-by-step instructions for creating a repository location, and for importing a file from the file system into the workbench.

Task topics are comprised of the following sections:

Use links to direct the user to related information; task topics do not provide conceptual information or present reference material.

Reference

Descriptions of wizards, views, shortcuts. Cite relevant external reference material

Eclipse online help 101:
General reference topics document non-conceptual or non-procedural stand-alone information. Examples of general reference topics can include descriptions of various workbench resources such as wizards, dialogs, views and perspectives, as well as, a list of keyboard shortcuts, a glossary, or JavaDocs information. Reference materials are helpful resources that will assist the user while using the platform. Additionally, you can use this section to site relevant external reference material. Information in general reference topics is often used to supplement other conceptual, task, and reference topics.

Export Site contents

  1. Start with the English (ie EN) space and:
  2. Select the correct options:
  3. This will generate and download a big zip file for you to save.
  4. Unzip this file over top of the net.refractions.udig.help project
  5. Grab the Table of Contents (TOC) files, and update :
    Edit Page Subversion File
    TOC toc.xml
    tocgettingstarted tocgettingstarted.xml
    tocconcepts tocconcepts.xml
    toctasks toctasks.xml
    tocreference tocreference.xml
    tocfaq tocfaq.xml

You will need to repeat this process for each translation internationalization fragment:
(these end up in the net.refractions.udig.help.nl1 fragment)

Note: page names are consistent across translations, the en|fr|de link switches locale.

(c) Copyright (c) 2004,2005 Refractions Research Inc. and others.