Talk:Categorized Main Page/archive
- This is an archive of past discussions. Please do not edit the contents of this page.
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Article Focus
Should there be articles about specific devices (that seems like repeating wikipedia) or should the articles be focused on
how the devices are related to designing an OS. Instead of having an article about what some device is, have it be about
writing drivers for it, how the device operates and what the OS needs to do to communicate with it.
-Telexicon 18:04, 2 December 2006 (CST)
You mean pages like wikipedia:Sound_blaster? If you use the Sound Blaster as an example, we probably shouldn't a single Sound Blaster page, instead we should have a category page that provides a brief intro description to the sound blaster family, links the the wikipedia articles, and has links to our pages that cover more programming specific info by major card type.
-Chase 18:29, 2 December 2006 (CST)
I agree. It would be useful to have a small introduction for each device and then list articles and resources for it. Then in another section of the article list our pages that go into details about interaction with the device and writing code for it. For writing code do you think things should be in C when they can be? -Telexicon 00:06, 3 December 2006 (CST)
Pseudocode should suffice for the real programmers (apart from it being not prejudiced about one language), but i guess some people are better off with some sample code which they can directly import. Personally, i'd prefer pseudocode unless either C or ASM is more obvious. Supplying both would probably be best - see the coma bug part here - Combuster 09:50, 3 December 2006 (CST)
Layout
In the hardware section on the main page I have noticed that some of the links go to categories and some of them go to articles. Would you prefer each of those be articles with links to more articles all of which are in the same category? Or would you rather have each of those links be categories with a small description and listing each of the sub-articles in that category? -Telexicon 00:06, 3 December 2006 (CST)
As an example each of the links on the main page could go to a main article for each category. That main article and all its sub-articles would all be included in that category (unless the sub-article led to a new sub-topic in which case it would become a sub-category). If a person were to click on the category page there would be a small paragraph on what the general idea of the category is and then a link using the {{main|Main Article}} template. It might be laid out like this:
- Main Page
- Category X Main Page (in Category X)
- Sub-Article X1 (in Category X)
- Sub-Article X2 (in Category X)
- Sub-Category Y Main Page (in Category Y)
- Sub-Article Y (in Category Y)
- Sub-Category Z Main Page (in Category Z)
- Sub-Article Z (in Category Z)
- Category X Main Page (in Category X)
with the categories laid out like
- Broad Category (Hardware, OS Theory, Tools)
- Category X (uses {{main|Category X Main Page}} - it is a sub-category of Broad Category.
- Category Y (uses {{main|Category Y Main Page}} - it is sub-category of Category X
- Category X (uses {{main|Category X Main Page}} - it is a sub-category of Broad Category.
If any style for this were to be used it would be nice to have it be consistent across all the pages so this wiki's layout isn't confusing to readers. Telexicon 04:42, 3 December 2006 (CST)
how about not categorizing categories and instead provide a header with subcategories/parent category manually. More work, but should solve your issue. Oops mediawiki already does that O.o - Combuster 09:50, 3 December 2006 (CST)
Related Content
At the bottom of many articles is a list of related reading, forum topics and external links. How do you think these should be laid out? Is there a consistent that is preferable for many users? Would it be something where every related item set gets its own heading? :
Should it be where all of them are subheadings of Related or See Also
See Also
Articles
- Article1
- Wikipedia:Article2
Threads
- Thread1
- Thread2
External Links
- http://www.link1.net
- http://www.link2.net
As with the last item I think it would be best if it was consistent. Also, for all these items could they possibly be compiled into a style guide if any final decisions are made on how the articles should be laid out? Telexicon 04:59, 3 December 2006 (CST)
Or just a links section as in here? - Combuster 09:50, 3 December 2006 (CST)
Tools
Right now the Tools section looks like this:
Tools
Do you think it would work better to have it like this? :
Tools
That way each page could host as many tools under each category and not fill up the main Tools menu.
- Strong Support I'd actually been thinking the same thing. Also, if all the links were to categories we wouldn't need to maintain those pages. -Jhawthorn 11:58, 5 December 2006 (CST)
Good idea. The current is one is like chaos and the old wiki. Also I'd go for the categories as well:
- Combuster 16:37, 5 December 2006 (CST)
I went ahead and changed it -Jhawthorn 19:38, 5 December 2006 (CST)
File systems
Enough for todays work. Question: should the filesystem link point to the theory page or the category page, or should both be present on the main page? - Combuster 09:03, 6 December 2006 (CST)
Main Page test
Just throwing around ideas: User:Jhawthorn/Main_Page
I removed the [edit] links and added "more" links at the end to each Section linking to it's category page.
-Jhawthorn 01:44, 7 December 2006 (CST)
I've removed the [edit] links from the real main page. If there is opposition to this change please revert it.
-Jhawthorn 18:40, 8 December 2006 (CST)
Instructions
I have some pages in Category:X86_Instructions as a test. I think they look pretty cool. They could use some more information, opcodes, clocks on more recent processors, etc. Any Opinions? --Jhawthorn
I Was reading the recent changes and the first thought that occurred to me was OMFG. I really consider this overkill. Documenting all instructions is
- an very exhaustive task and
- we have the intel/amd manuals for that. (and once downloaded we dont need an internet connection for it)
- IMO beyond the scope of this wiki
- good cause for ambiguity when we whant to do it for more than one processor.
Also, clock cycles and the like are pretty much indeterminate on 6th generation processors and later. And giving each opcode an separate page hardly works to the advantage of any comparison. Talking about differences between processors is a more useful task as people can not generally find those without looking at more than one datasheet. - Combuster 12:08, 13 December 2006 (CST)
- I'll remove clocks. I only used it because I had the information on hand. I was only planning on having instructions that pertained strongly to osdev, or are referred to by other pages (i feel that all the current instructions fit in this category). Is this still disagreeable Combuster? Please sign your comments, Jhawthorn, by using four tildes (~). Thanks :-) --Walling
- I wrote the INT article. I tried to write a little more than just a single line. I think some instructions can be nice to write an article about, while others are not. What is an article then? I think there should at least be some wikilinks to other articles. Hopefully they all turn blue in the future as well. Then the reader can browse to other relevant articles. If one wants to know anything about enabling interrupts he might search for STI. He should be able to read about what it does and why and linked to further information. He might want to know about IRQs or CPU exceptions and stuff like that. An external reference could be added too, fx. the Intel Reference. That is one of the ideas with a wiki, I think. What do you say? --Walling 18:34, 13 December 2006 (CST)
I'd merge INT, STI, CLI, and LIDT into an Interrupts page. Speaking of which, I think I should create that page sometime - Combuster 02:36, 14 December 2006 (CST)
- Okay, maybe you're right. --Walling 03:33, 14 December 2006 (CST)
Main Page design
Discussion Thread --Walling 03:19, 14 December 2006 (CST)
Tutorial link
I think a link to the tutorial category should be added to the first box (below the FAQ link). Comments? - Combuster 15:59, 9 January 2007 (CST)
- Absolutely -Jhawthorn 19:03, 9 January 2007 (CST)
os dev image
do you thing we should change welcome to osdev.org to a image? --Stinkfly 04:10, 24 August 2007 (CDT)
I personally don't think so. Any particular reason why it should be? All I see is a tonne of images not loading for some people, added bandwidth (quite a few forum members are still on dialup), etc. Of course, I welcome the argument against me. Yayyak 06:39, 24 August 2007 (CDT)
- Agreed. There is as far as I can see no reason that the text box is not suitable, and the overhead of having an image is larger and less supported. - Combuster 04:38, 25 August 2007 (CDT)
Combine the header templates into one?
I had the thought of combining the three templates for the header into one (or use one that just includes the other three) so it's easier to edit and add the header templates. Just shaves a few steps off the time needed to play with the templates. --Troy Martin 02:49, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
- Sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe it would also be a good idea to put a link to the IRC Channel chat page on the main page, to make people notice it. I didn't even know we had one until I looked at the orphaned page list! --Creature 16:33, 28 August 2009 (GMT + 1)
languages
Should Haskell, D, C--, and C# be listed on the main page? IMO the list of languages is getting long. They're not the languages used for kernel, let alone systems, programming besides by a small minority. --MessiahAndrw 03:59, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
- I just put them there for the sake of being complete (as there weren't too many anyhow), but I agree it's a bit crowded and long. We could stick to only putting the main languages on the main page (ASM, C, C++). --Creature 10:31, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
- Agreed, C-- is in disuse, C# is not supported, and Haskell is definately not supported by the community. The language tab is already complete as it was - There's a more link for the daring ones (or idiots) in case they do want something else. Also, I'd consider it unwise to promote such "esoteric languages" at the front page - it would only lead to more clueless people who just happen to know that language without the needed fundament. I see no advantages in keeping this week's change. - Combuster 17:56, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
