# \[ANN\] Summer Reboot Documentation

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [June 22, 2008, 10:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125 "2008-06-22T10:18:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 15\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2008, 10:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/1 "2008-06-22T10:18:39Z")

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Hi Guys

We have been in discussion about starting up another effort to write up  
Radiant documentation. I had earlier posted out something like a Table  
of Contents that we could use as a preliminary outline. I’ve created  
this on the wiki as ‘Summer Reboot’ (in honour of the thread that  
started this push again!) and it’s online at:  
[http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer\_Reboot](http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer_Reboot)

I’ve also created a section on the page called ‘Author Abbreviations’ -  
just put your name there with an abbreviation. Then, you can use the  
abbreviation to claim certain articles as your own 🙂

If you already have material that could be used, please claim the  
article. If someone has claimed the article already but you have the  
same thing written up, please add it in also. One of us can later  
combine the best parts of both to make it completely useful.

Cheers,  
Mohit.  
6/22/2008 | 4:14 PM.

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2008, 10:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/2 "2008-06-22T10:55:30Z")

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Well done, Mohit. I’ve signed up for a few articles. What’s the time  
horizon on this project - should we aim at having all articles ready  
by the end August?

/Casper

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2008, 11:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/3 "2008-06-22T11:00:46Z")

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Casper F. wrote:

> Well done, Mohit. I’ve signed up for a few articles. What’s the time  
> horizon on this project - should we aim at having all articles ready  
> by the end August?
> 
> /Casper

That would be great! Now that Radiant 0.6.7 is out, I hope that the  
basic things won’t change much for a while. So, taking 10 weeks out for  
this would be great!

I hope that people will also feel free to change the outline to add more  
things in.

One last thing - once you’ve got an article done, just announce it to  
the list. If possible, I’ll help to proof read it (not saying that I’m  
great at it, just saying that it’s good to have another pair of eyes  
edit it, if possible).

Cheers,  
Mohit.  
6/22/2008 | 4:57 PM.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2008, 6:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/4 "2008-06-22T18:20:33Z")

</div>

Hate to burst your bubble, but I imagine we’ll have 1 or 2 releases  
within the next 10 weeks. I’ll be getting back up to speed after my  
move to NC, which is in ten days. If there’s anyone in RDU-CH area who  
wants to meetup and hack on Radiant on Fridays, be sure to ping me in  
the second week of July.

Sean

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2008, 6:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/5 "2008-06-22T18:34:37Z")

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Sean C. wrote:

> Hate to burst your bubble, but I imagine we’ll have 1 or 2 releases  
> within the next 10 weeks. I’ll be getting back up to speed after my  
> move to NC, which is in ten days. If there’s anyone in RDU-CH area  
> who wants to meetup and hack on Radiant on Fridays, be sure to ping me  
> in the second week of July.
> 
> Sean

Hahah… I see! Let’s hope that the changes aren’t too big - and that  
most things will continue to work as it is! On the other hand, I’m  
happy to see documentation go out of sync if it means that we’re getting  
a better Radiant! 🙂

We’ll fix the documentation as releases come in!

Cheers,  
Mohit.  
6/23/2008 | 12:32 AM.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 5:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/6 "2008-06-23T17:33:06Z")

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Mohit S. wrote:

> We have been in discussion about starting up another effort to write up  
> Radiant documentation. I had earlier posted out something like a Table  
> of Contents that we could use as a preliminary outline. I’ve created  
> this on the wiki as ‘Summer Reboot’ (in honour of the thread that  
> started this push again!) and it’s online at:  
> [http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer\_Reboot](http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer_Reboot)

Thanks Mohit, this looks great. I tagged a few articles for myself,  
added a list item for the built-in Archive extension, and added a  
paragraph to the page intro about claiming articles with your initials.

- Dave

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 8:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/7 "2008-06-24T08:23:19Z")

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On 22 Jun 2008, at 09:17, Mohit S. wrote:

> Abbreviations’ - just put your name there with an abbreviation.  
> Then, you can use the abbreviation to claim certain articles as your  
> own 🙂

I’ve just added my name and claimed a few articles. I’d like to write  
an introductory piece on Radius tags.

Cheers,  
Drew

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 5:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/8 "2008-06-23T17:48:39Z")

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David P. wrote:

> Thanks Mohit, this looks great. I tagged a few articles for myself,  
> added a list item for the built-in Archive extension, and added a  
> paragraph to the page intro about claiming articles with your initials.
> 
> - Dave

Thanks Dave, for filling in the gaps for me 🙂

I love wikis 🙂

Cheers,  
Mohit.  
6/23/2008 | 11:46 PM.

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 11:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/9 "2008-06-24T11:16:15Z")

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Andrew N. wrote:

> > [http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer\_Reboot](http://wiki.radiantcms.org/Summer_Reboot)
> > 
> > I’ve also created a section on the page called ‘Author Abbreviations’
> > 
> > - just put your name there with an abbreviation. Then, you can use  
> > the abbreviation to claim certain articles as your own 🙂
> 
> I’ve just added my name and claimed a few articles. I’d like to write  
> an introductory piece on Radius tags.
> 
> Cheers,  
> Drew

Thanks Drew. I shall add on to your introductory piece with at least a  
bit about how to show dates on articles and to use the other properties  
of the ‘page’ such as author, etc.

Cheers,  
Mohit.  
6/24/2008 | 5:14 PM.

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 6:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/10 "2008-06-24T18:16:08Z")

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On Jun 24, 2008, at 2:14 AM, Mohit S. wrote:

> > > Reboot’ (in honour of the thread that started this push again!)
> > 
> > Cheers,  
> > Drew
> 
> Thanks Drew. I shall add on to your introductory piece with at  
> least a bit about how to show dates on articles and to use the other  
> properties of the ‘page’ such as author, etc.

Just signed up for “Creating an extension I – Adding tags”. Since  
having to reverse engineer other extensions that implement tags a few  
weeks back was no fun.

-Alex

> **[Beautiful Pixel](https://beautifulpixel.com/)**
>
> A log of random code experiments and semi-useless thoughts from some software developer named Alex...

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2008, 4:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/11 "2008-07-16T04:12:22Z")

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Hi All,

Sorry for being late to the party.

I originally posted to the list on May 2nd about documentation  
(e$B!He(Btag documentation feedbacke$B!Ie(B), mentioning among other  
things a tag reference. This would have one page per tag, be in a  
wiki, and hopefully auto-import the current e$B!He(Bavailable  
tagse$B!Ie(B documentation from the code (would it be possible to  
script that?). Ie$B!Ge(Bve added this to the summer reboot wiki page as  
an appendix.

Currently the documentation ToC is kind of book-like, in that a user  
would start at the start (or a chapter/topic of interest) and read  
linearly to the end. Ie$B!Ge(Bd also like to suggest we support  
reference style, for example the tag reference docs, and problem-  
solving style (how-to articles), for example short code example  
articles on one topic; how to implement blog-style categories using  
\<r:aggregate /\>, how to produce common variants of monthly archive  
lists etc.

Currently the docs are a little repetitive or fractured, for example  
tag information is spread over four places on the wiki and blog, so we  
should also think how to avoid repeating content too much. For  
tags Ie$B!Ge(Bd propose putting the most detail into a tag reference,  
and having eg the e$B!He(BUsing the built-in tagse$B!Ie(B article be an  
overview grouped by topic with examples, with links to the tag  
reference and how-to articles for more detail. I think that putting  
the detail into atomic reference pages will make it easier to keep the  
main documentation articles light and quick to read, and help reduce  
repetition.

Ie$B!Ge(Bm happy to flesh out the tag documentation and add examples,  
but someone else will need to write the script to automatically  
generate/update wiki pages using the available tags text. If such a  
script is impractical Ie$B!Ge(Bll start doing it manually if a tag  
reference header page is created.

Some reference for how others do this:

Movable Type: [MovableType.org – Documentation](http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/appendices/tags/)  
Expression Engine: [http://expressionengine.com/docs/overview/tags.html](http://expressionengine.com/docs/overview/tags.html)  
WordPress: [Template Tags « WordPress Codex](http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags)

These things would be nice for the tag reference:

- best practice code examples, with expected results
- code coloring in code examples
- links to related tags, how-to articles that use this tag, and  
relevant part of tag overview article and other documentation
- a link in the Radiant admin e$B!He(Bavailable tagse$B!Ie(B  
documentation to the more detailed tag reference page on the wiki

Finally it would be great if there was automatic linking of how-to  
articles and tag reference pages, ie if a how-to article on monthly  
archive lists has a code example with r:children:each, r:find, r:date  
and r:header, that it would automatically link to those tag reference  
pages, and in turn the how-to article would be linked to on each  
relevant tag reference page.

hope thate$B!Ge(Bs of some use

peace - oli

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 6:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/12 "2008-06-24T18:22:00Z")

</div>

Alex W. wrote:

> > > > write up Radiant documentation. I had earlier posted out something
> 
> Just signed up for “Creating an extension I – Adding tags”. Since  
> having to reverse engineer other extensions that implement tags a few  
> weeks back was no fun.
> 
> -Alex  
> [http://beautifulpixel.com](http://beautifulpixel.com)

Excellent! This project is really starting to roll now 🙂

Cheers,  
Mohit.  
6/25/2008 | 12:19 AM.

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:50am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/13 "2008-07-25T07:50:48Z")

</div>

Mohit:

I looked at the existing documentation! Great work. I am willing to fund  
some of the activity if that will speed up things. I have a need of such  
documentation in September. Feel free to contact if you are interested.

Cheers  
Zaheed Haque  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2008, 6:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/14 "2008-07-23T18:02:04Z")

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Hi Oli

Sorry for the late reply. I think there have been a few replies, but  
there are a couple of things that I would like to respond to… since I  
drew up the first Table of Contents 😛

Oli S. wrote:

> I originally posted to the list on May 2nd about documentation (e$B!He(Btag  
> documentation feedbacke$B!Ie(B), mentioning among other things a tag  
> reference. This would have one page per tag, be in a wiki, and  
> hopefully auto-import the current e$B!He(Bavailable tagse$B!Ie(B documentation from  
> the code (would it be possible to script that?). Ie$B!Ge(Bve added this to  
> the summer reboot wiki page as an appendix.

Yes, this should be there - it is currently spread out all over.

> Currently the documentation ToC is kind of book-like, in that a user  
> would start at the start (or a chapter/topic of interest) and read  
> linearly to the end. Ie$B!Ge(Bd also like to suggest we support reference  
> style, for example the tag reference docs, and problem-solving style  
> (how-to articles), for example short code example articles on one  
> topic; how to implement blog-style categories using \<r:aggregate /\>,  
> how to produce common variants of monthly archive lists etc.

The intent was specifically to keep it book like - so that there was a  
first run documentation for Radiant that could actually be read like a  
book - cover to cover from basic to advanced. I have always wanted to  
fashion this so that it can be made into a PDF book that someone could  
put on a shelf if they wanted. Reference style can be added almost  
immediately by adding a wiki page that holds it together, so go ahead  
and add it in! For what it’s worth, I have tried to capture a few of  
those flows - like ‘adding images’ and ‘customizations’, etc.

I also want to make sure that neat tricks and tips are captured so that  
we can do a ‘Radiant Recipes’ later - something like Winter Reboot,  
perhaps? 😛

> Currently the docs are a little repetitive or fractured, for example  
> tag information is spread over four places on the wiki and blog, so we  
> should also think how to avoid repeating content too much. For tags  
> Ie$B!Ge(Bd propose putting the most detail into a tag reference, and having  
> eg the e$B!He(BUsing the built-in tagse$B!Ie(B article be an overview grouped by  
> topic with examples, with links to the tag reference and how-to  
> articles for more detail. I think that putting the detail into atomic  
> reference pages will make it easier to keep the main documentation  
> articles light and quick to read, and help reduce repetition.

Agreed. I would still like it to be a bit like ‘article about something’  
with a link to a detailed reference, if available.

> Ie$B!Ge(Bm happy to flesh out the tag documentation and add examples, but  
> someone else will need to write the script to automatically  
> generate/update wiki pages using the available tags text. If such a  
> script is impractical Ie$B!Ge(Bll start doing it manually if a tag reference  
> header page is created.

I think this is a good idea - and I believe that someone has responded  
to this.

> - links to related tags, how-to articles that use this tag, and  
> relevant part of tag overview article and other documentation
> - a link in the Radiant admin e$B!He(Bavailable tagse$B!Ie(B documentation to the  
> more detailed tag reference page on the wiki

Thanks for the details - these are good!

> Finally it would be great if there was automatic linking of how-to  
> articles and tag reference pages, ie if a how-to article on monthly  
> archive lists has a code example with r:children:each, r:find, r:date  
> and r:header, that it would automatically link to those tag reference  
> pages, and in turn the how-to article would be linked to on each  
> relevant tag reference page.

Any suggestions how we could incorporate this?

> hope thate$B!Ge(Bs of some use  
> It’s of a lot of use! Please continue to contribute to the direction and  
> content of Summer Reboot 🙂

Cheers,  
Mohit.  
7/23/2008 | 11:56 PM.

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**Author:** ![mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/bbe5ce/32.png) [@mohits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mohits)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 8:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ann-summer-reboot-documentation/141125/15 "2008-07-25T08:57:51Z")

</div>

Zaheed Haque wrote:

> Mohit:
> 
> I looked at the existing documentation! Great work. I am willing to fund  
> some of the activity if that will speed up things. I have a need of such  
> documentation in September. Feel free to contact if you are interested.
> 
> Cheers  
> Zaheed Haque  
> removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

Hi Zaheed,

I’m just trying to roughly coordinate the activities relating to the  
Summer Reboot documentation. Thank you for your kind comments about it

- it’s been put together so far by the “people” 🙂

Would money help? I think this issue is up to the group really… guys,  
what do you feel about Zaheed’s offer?

Best wishes  
Mohit.
