Best place for HOWTO documents for your favourite application?

[Reece Dunn]

Hi,

I have been trying our various Oberon Media games. The thing that is
holding this up from working is the hyperlinks on the intro screen (I
am going to enter a bug report later on).

I have worked out how to run and register the games (given a valid
registration key that you have purchased) so that they will work under
Wine. So this got me wondering... where do I put this?

This complements the appdb, but is in a way orthogonal to it (that is
there may be HOWTOs relating to individual games/applications, to
vendors or to other areas such as installing Windows themes like the
Zune theme). It will also help when more people start using Wine and
want to get their favorite application running.

My initial thoughts are that the wiki seems like a good place for
this. Thoughts? Comments?

- Reece

[Austin English]

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 6:11 PM, Reece Dunn <msclrhd(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been trying our various Oberon Media games. The thing that is
> holding this up from working is the hyperlinks on the intro screen (I
> am going to enter a bug report later on).
>
> I have worked out how to run and register the games (given a valid
> registration key that you have purchased) so that they will work under
> Wine. So this got me wondering... where do I put this?
>
> This complements the appdb, but is in a way orthogonal to it (that is
> there may be HOWTOs relating to individual games/applications, to
> vendors or to other areas such as installing Windows themes like the
> Zune theme). It will also help when more people start using Wine and
> want to get their favorite application running.
>
> My initial thoughts are that the wiki seems like a good place for
> this. Thoughts? Comments?
>
> - Reece

I don't see why this shouldn't be put in the AppDB. The wiki may be
useful for installing themes, etc., but this seems to be related to a
particular app/vendor, and should be in the AppDB.

[Reece Dunn]

2008/5/26 Austin English <austinenglish(a)gmail.com>:
> On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 6:11 PM, Reece Dunn <msclrhd(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have been trying our various Oberon Media games. The thing that is
> > holding this up from working is the hyperlinks on the intro screen (I
> > am going to enter a bug report later on).
> >
> > I have worked out how to run and register the games (given a valid
> > registration key that you have purchased) so that they will work under
> > Wine. So this got me wondering... where do I put this?
> >
> > This complements the appdb, but is in a way orthogonal to it (that is
> > there may be HOWTOs relating to individual games/applications, to
> > vendors or to other areas such as installing Windows themes like the
> > Zune theme). It will also help when more people start using Wine and
> > want to get their favorite application running.
> >
> > My initial thoughts are that the wiki seems like a good place for
> > this. Thoughts? Comments?
>
> I don't see why this shouldn't be put in the AppDB. The wiki may be
> useful for installing themes, etc., but this seems to be related to a
> particular app/vendor, and should be in the AppDB.

Ok. However, I don't see anything on the AppDB forms for entering
HOWTO information for a vendor or application and linking application
notes to the vendor version.

Do you mean these should be in the Application Comments section? If
so, what about having Vendor Comments as well? However, these feel
more like email discussions about applications and the HOWTO notes
could get lost in the noise; in addition to this, the HOWTO may evolve
and thus it would be harder to track down which is the right one.

- Reece

[Scott Ritchie]

Reece Dunn wrote:
> 2008/5/26 Austin English <austinenglish(a)gmail.com>:
> > On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 6:11 PM, Reece Dunn <msclrhd(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I have been trying our various Oberon Media games. The thing that is
> > > holding this up from working is the hyperlinks on the intro screen (I
> > > am going to enter a bug report later on).
> > >
> > > I have worked out how to run and register the games (given a valid
> > > registration key that you have purchased) so that they will work under
> > > Wine. So this got me wondering... where do I put this?
> > >
> > > This complements the appdb, but is in a way orthogonal to it (that is
> > > there may be HOWTOs relating to individual games/applications, to
> > > vendors or to other areas such as installing Windows themes like the
> > > Zune theme). It will also help when more people start using Wine and
> > > want to get their favorite application running.
> > >
> > > My initial thoughts are that the wiki seems like a good place for
> > > this. Thoughts? Comments?
> > > I don't see why this shouldn't be put in the AppDB. The wiki may be
> > > useful for installing themes, etc., but this seems to be related to a
> > > particular app/vendor, and should be in the AppDB.
>
> Ok. However, I don't see anything on the AppDB forms for entering
> HOWTO information for a vendor or application and linking application
> notes to the vendor version.
>
> Do you mean these should be in the Application Comments section? If
> so, what about having Vendor Comments as well? However, these feel
> more like email discussions about applications and the HOWTO notes
> could get lost in the noise; in addition to this, the HOWTO may evolve
> and thus it would be harder to track down which is the right one.

Hmm...with the current software you may have to be a maintainer and make
a Howto for each game then.  Alternatively you could put a link in each
howto to another AppDB (or wiki) page, if you want to keep the
instructions centralized.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie

[Adam Petaccia]

On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 00:11 +0100, Reece Dunn wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been trying our various Oberon Media games. The thing that is
> holding this up from working is the hyperlinks on the intro screen (I
> am going to enter a bug report later on).
>
> I have worked out how to run and register the games (given a valid
> registration key that you have purchased) so that they will work under
> Wine. So this got me wondering... where do I put this?
>
> This complements the appdb, but is in a way orthogonal to it (that is
> there may be HOWTOs relating to individual games/applications, to
> vendors or to other areas such as installing Windows themes like the
> Zune theme). It will also help when more people start using Wine and
> want to get their favorite application running.
>
> My initial thoughts are that the wiki seems like a good place for
> this. Thoughts? Comments?
> The problem with wikis is that they don't expire unless someone actually
> goes through the pages and updates them. So say AwesomeGame 1.0 doesn't
> work with Wine 1.0-rc2, and some workarounds are written down. 6 months
> later with AwesomeGame 1.6 is out, and so is Wine 1.2, the game now
> works out of the box. But the workarounds are still listed on the Wiki.

AppDB deals with this rather well, because for most games you don't see
old-as-* work-arounds that may actually be potentially damaging (No-CD
cracks that aren't needed, etc). 

So I'd vote for AppDB.
> - Reece