Oolite Bulletins

One thing that has occurred to me recently is that it can be difficult to find a specific ship oxp.

This is in no way a criticism of all the hard work done putting together oxps, editing and maintaining the wiki or anyone else it is simply an observation that the oxp ships available appear to be fragmented in a number of locations.

For example: -

Currently the Oolite Main Page on the Wiki has a link for ships however the link from here to oxp ships does not list the full set of ships available (It appears to list only less recent ships).

Also many additional ships can be found in the dynamic ship list however as I understand it this list only lists ships which have their own Wiki pages.

So again their would appear to be a batch of ships that are newer than those linked on the main wiki page but without their own specific wiki page that are available but difficult to track down.

This is probably a silly question and I suspect I already know the answer but is it a major job to pull together all ship oxps in to one location and does anyone know how this could be done ?

As stated above I am not intending to criticise in any way it just seems a shame that we don’t appear to have a complete ship list of available ship oxps but I suspect that if this was something easily achieved it would have been done already.

Don't forget the OXP table is sortable, so you can either click on 'ships' in the header, or sort by catagory and scroll down to 'ships'. This should cover pretty much all of them.

Thanks Smivs I have seen this list but have noticed that some ships are missing.

The Colonial Viper Mark 1 that Maik kindly uploaded for me some time ago is listed here however as an example the Serpent Class Cruiser is not.

I suspect that in this case this is an omission on my part (I created a wiki page for the serpent which automatically linked it to the dynamic ship list and also created a release thread on the forum but didn’t realise that I also needed to edit the OXP table). I should now however be able to do so using the Colonial Viper Mark 1 as an example.

My point however is that for various reasons an oxp author may not have edited this list to include each of their ships and therefore whilst containing the majority of ships it is not complete.

I guess that there is no way to compile a guaranteed 100% complete list.

Also would it be worth linking the OXP table to the ship section of the Wiki Oolite Main Page ?

Shipbuilder wrote:

I guess that there is no way to compile a guaranteed 100% complete list.

You're right, there isn't, and there can't be, because it is still each OXP-author's responsibility to put each of their OXPs in each of the relevant lists and places on the Wiki. Your own example shows that even with the best intentions OXP-author's will not always do that.

Maybe we could use this thread to have each OXP author post their work. Maybe just a link to a separate thread, like this...

249th Naval Reserve Wing OXP

Core Cobra3 and Anaconda modified with additional energy and fire-power, paintjob modified to include stellar camo.

The alternative easy solution is that as long as the ship creator/lister has correctly categorised the ship it should appear in the ship category list.

If you created a wiki page for a new ship OXP it is automatically linked it to the dynamic ship list and also to the ship category list mentioned by Selezen.

It is not however automatically added to the OXP table or the ship link on the Main Oolite Wiki page.

You're right, there isn't, and there can't be, because it is still each OXP-author's responsibility to put each of their OXPs in each of the relevant lists and places on the Wiki. Your own example shows that even with the best intentions OXP-author's will not always do that.

If this is the case for the OXP table and the ship link on the Main Oolite Wiki page then fair enough however I was wondering if the dynamic ship list and the ship catogory list are updated automatically following the creation of a ship OXP wiki page why can this not be done for the other lists ?

I am not trying to be difficult here am I just trying to understand the different mechanics (But also if there is some way to have all lists updated upon the creation of a ship OXP page that would be good news for everyone).

Having said that there are still some OXP ships which may drop through the net - one example being Staer 9’s excellent Firefly which doesn’t have a wiki page.

Shipbuilder wrote:

You're right, there isn't, and there can't be, because it is still each OXP-author's responsibility to put each of their OXPs in each of the relevant lists and places on the Wiki. Your own example shows that even with the best intentions OXP-author's will not always do that.

If this is the case for the OXP table and the ship link on the Main Oolite Wiki page then fair enough however I was wondering if the dynamic ship list and the ship catogory list are updated automatically following the creation of a ship OXP wiki page why can this not be done for the other lists ?

I am not trying to be difficult here am I just trying to understand the different mechanics (But also if there is some way to have all lists updated upon the creation of a ship OXP page that would be good news for everyone).

No problem. You've already understood the main point, which is that there are indeed different mechanics at work here.

The dynamic ship list and the ship category list are index pages. They work like the 'table of contents' function in your text processor: every headline that is marked as such automatically shows up in the auto-created table of contents page. So the only thing you have to do is to set the appropriate mark.

The OXP list, on the other hand, is a hand-written table. This is because there are severe limitations to the layout of an index page: they all look the same, and they can only contain links to other pages, no additional explanatory text for each link. That's not what we want for the OXP list, whose whole purpose it is to not only list the OXP names, but give a brief overview on what each OXP does, and contain some more information, like workability and date of release. As an added bonus, the table is sortable for each of its columns. You simply can't do all these things with an auto-generated index page.

Thus, all OXP authors need to put their work on the table by hand, after creating their OXP's home page.

@ Commander McLane – Ok and thank you very much for the explanation.

The Dynamic_Ship_List_(Oolite) uses the Semantic MediaWiki extension (see https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11961), so it can be done. The same is possible for other lists (like the OXP table). If you feel that other lists should be autogenerated too get in touch with maik. It is some work as all OXP pages have to be altered in that process though.

The Categories CMcL is referring to are a different cup of tea.

Svengali wrote:

The same is possible for other lists (like the OXP table). If you feel that other lists should be autogenerated too get in touch with maik. It is some work as all OXP pages have to be altered in that process though.

Also a bit of a problem for the OXP list as not every OXP has a Wiki page at all yet.

cim wrote:

Also a bit of a problem for the OXP list as not every OXP has a Wiki page at all yet.

I tend to ignore these OXPs .-)

Svengali wrote:

The Dynamic_Ship_List_(Oolite) uses the Semantic MediaWiki extension (see https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11961), so it can be done. The same is possible for other lists (like the OXP table). If you feel that other lists should be autogenerated too get in touch with maik. It is some work as all OXP pages have to be altered in that process though.

The Categories CMcL is referring to are a different cup of tea.

There are some lists I'd like to automate but work is keeping me awfully busy at the moment. You might have noticed that I haven't been spending any time recently keeping the OXP List up to date... on the other hand, this is something that everyone who maintains an OXP can do themselves and many already do--thanks, guys!

The same is true for creating more automated lists using the Semantic Media Wiki extension. I learned it while doing the dynamic ship list and surely others can learn it, too.

Or just wait until I get enough of a brake from work again