New OXP wiki pages: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP

maik · Post by **maik** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 2:03 pm

I actually replaced the content of Oolite_Missions with Oolite_Missions_Overview now and moved the old content to Oolite_Missions_Old. I also changed the link in your page to point to Oolite_Missions.

Nice overview btw, I like it better than what we had before!

mcarans · Post by **mcarans** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 2:15 pm

maik wrote:
Nice overview btw, I like it better than what we had before!

Glad to hear it.

maik wrote:
I actually replaced the content of Oolite_Missions with Oolite_Missions_Overview now and moved the old content to Oolite_Missions_Old. I also changed the link in your page to point to Oolite_Missions.

Good you did it that way as the link on the main page now points to your page as well. Nice work!

Commander Smivs · Post by **Smivs** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 2:57 pm

Looking good on the whole.
A lot of the links aren't working at the moment. Look out for the red ones. This is caused by the incorrect name being used...it needs to be exactly the same as the wiki page name.
For example I've just corrected my Accesssories OXP entry. It was listed as 'Accessories' but is actually titled 'Accessories OXP'.
So, a bit of fine-tuning to do, but a really good improvement to the Wiki OXP section.

maik · Post by **maik** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 3:27 pm

mcarans wrote:
Nice work!

Thanks!

Cmd. Cheyd · Post by **Cmd. Cheyd** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 3:28 pm

Updated mine to have proper titles also. Looks nice so far.

mcarans · Post by **mcarans** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 4:12 pm

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:
Looks nice so far.

Thanks

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:
Updated mine to have proper titles also.

In order to keep the row on one line, can you put the Deep Horizon in the Brief Description?

eg.
OXP: D.H. Gas Giant Skimming
Brief Description: [Deep Horizon] Skim gas giants to refuel a ship or mine them for rare minerals

where possibly Gas Giant Skimming links to the specific page http://deephorizonindustries.com/Gas_Gi ... mming.html
and Deep Horizon Industries links to http://deephorizonindustries.com/

or since you view Deep Horizon as a meta OXP, create it separately under the Category Combination and in Brief Description, reference Gas Giant Skimming, SR2 etc.

I have done the first of the two possibilities above so you can see what it looks like.

Using Firesizer for Firefox, I've run the browser at 1280 width and made everything fit on one line for all OXPs in the tables. This means no author's OXP gets prominence. Please let me know if at this resolution it doesn't appear on one line for you.

Cmd. Cheyd · Post by **Cmd. Cheyd** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 6:48 pm

I appreciate your efforts and understand your reasoning, mcarans. I am a stickler for aesthetics as well, which explains the slowness with which I produce my stuff.

"Deep Horizon" is part of the titles, not simply an identifier as to who produced them. "Deep Horizon" is a Meta-OXP spread across several component oxp's. All of the component OXP's have the "Deep Horizon" prefix in order to identify them as such and is therefore part of the title.

Further, I'm sure upcoming OXPs by other authors will use long titles at times, not just mine. An OXP author should not need, nor be asked, to change the name of his OXP simply as a means of accommodating the formatting of a Wiki page. Normally it is better to change the table layout to match the needs of the information stored on it, instead of changing the information to match the layout.

Svengali · Post by **Svengali** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:04 pm

Hello mcarans,

the sortable table is nice. .-)

mcarans wrote:
In order to keep the row on one line, can you put the Deep Horizon in the Brief Description?

Why should a oxp title be changed? Only to fit without wrap in that table? Nah. Then the table layout should be changed, I think. It could also be nice if the cells left and top borders wouldn't be visible and could make it more readable.

mcarans · Post by **mcarans** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:05 pm

The basic problem here is longer OXP name = shorter description and 84 characters is already a quite brief description.

You could argue that 2 lines for each OXP is ok, but firstly that would double the length of the tables, but also I reckon it's inevitable that once we have 2 lines, someone will want 3. Also if some OXPs are on one line and some on two, then the ones on two will get unfair prominence in the tables.

I think that 23 characters for an OXP name is not unreasonable. I used the abbreviation D.H. in front of your OXP's name eg. D.H. Gas Giant Skimming with Deep Horizon appearing at the start of the description - that should make the association clear. As soon as people go to your very nice website: http://deephorizonindustries.com/ they can see immediately the full information about your OXPs and their relationship to the Deep Horizon meta OXP.

However, I am open to persuasion if more OXP authors reply here that a longer OXP name with shorter description is better. In fact, if you want to change the name back, feel free to edit the column widths and all the longer descriptions to make the OXP rows stay on one line.

Commander Smivs · Post by **Smivs** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:19 pm

Tricky one, this. Just goes to show you can't please all the people all the time, specially when both viewpoints are right

Sorry, no forthcoming solution...I don't know what the answer is.
One other point, should we leave the Author blank until they're comfirmed? 'Unknown' is probably not true...somebody knows who they are.

Svengali · Post by **Svengali** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:30 pm

mcarans wrote:
You could argue that 2 lines for each OXP is ok, but firstly that would double the length of the tables, but also I reckon it's inevitable that once we have 2 lines, someone will want 3. Also if some OXPs are on one line and some on two, then the ones on two will get unfair prominence in the tables.

Hmm. Don't get me wrong, but why should we restrict a name or a description? It's up to the oxpers to choose a name, to fill in the description and some oxps will need some more words than only 'OXP. Add ships.' .-)

I think your goal was to give players a better overview? And yes, tables have the tendency to grow, we have seen this .-)

Smivs wrote:
Tricky one, this.

He. Yes, some more thinking seems necessary. I've only stumbled about it.

maik · Post by **maik** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:35 pm

You will get entries that span two or more lines anyways when someone chooses a narrower window size for the browser.

I actually wonder why my table sizes dynamically to the full width of the window while yours seems to have a maximum horizontal size limit. Can't see anything in the code that explains it.

mcarans · Post by **mcarans** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:45 pm

I thought of a solution - noone ever sorts by Brief Description, so why not merge the OXP name with the Brief Description? Then its up to the OXP author to decide how to use the "OXP Name and Description" column.

Any objections?

Svengali ( It could also be nice if the cells left and top borders wouldn't be visible and could make it more readable.) - I'm happy for you to make that change and we'll see how it looks.

As for width, yes it stretches to fit so one line at say 1980 is indeed many more characters. That's why I use Firesizer to check it at 1280.

Svengali · Post by **Svengali** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:46 pm

Sure. It's using fixed width for the rows.

Commander Smivs · Post by **Smivs** » Fri Aug 06, 2010 7:47 pm

mcarans wrote:
I thought of a solution - noone ever sorts by Brief Description, so why not merge the OXP name with the Brief Description? Then its up to the OXP author to decide how to use the "OXP Name and Description" column.

Any objections?

That might even work!