UltraFractal Wiki now available

[_db_]

I've compiled a wiki that contains many of the very informative and useful posts that have been made to the Ultra Fractal mailing list since early this year along with links to some fractal resources on the web and other information.  It contains text data roughly equivalent to a 750 page book organised into almost 300 topics with extensive cross-referencing.

This wiki doesn't supplant or duplicate the UF Help, on line tutorials,
etc.,  instead it links to them where appropriate.  I started it because
I was frustrated with my inability to find the answer to a question that
had already been asked repeatedly on the mailing list.  As the wiki grew
I thought it might be useful to others so have tried to make it suitable
for general use.

You can download it from:  http://www.mediafire.com/ultrafractalwiki

I apologise for the popups and ads on the site that you'll encounter if
you're not using pop up and ad filters like I have on my Firefox
browser.  I haven't been able to find a reliable free file hosting
alternative.

To install the wiki simply download the UltraFractalWiki-html.rar file
from the above site,  extract the archive to any directory and open
UltraFractalWiki.html with your web browser. Navigate the links and use
the Forward/Back buttons like any web site. Use the browser's Search
function to find specific words in the document.  The root of the wiki
provides a hierarchical structure which is a good starting place for
browsing, you can return to this page at any time by pressing CTRL-HOME.

The root page has the following structure:

'About this Wiki':
gives some useful general info, please take a look at it.

'ConceptsAndTerms':
by far the biggest topic,  it's a good place to start browsing

'Examples':
provides links to examples of some less common techniques and formulas.

'HowTo':
task rather than concept oriented, with links to topics such as  'Keep dust in a render',   add 'CopyrightAndWatermark', etc.

'ReferenceInfo':
provides links to topics both in the wiki and on the web i.e. 'Networking', 'UF Challenges', 'Online Formula Reference'

'Tutorials':
provides links to tutorials in the wiki and some that are on the web.


This wiki isn't 'complete' and no doubt contains many errors.  Please
don't hesitate to point out any shortcomings, I'll be continuing to
refine the content and add new content as long as there is interest in
the wiki and my  time permits.

My original content is a minuscule part of this wiki. I thank the many
individuals on this list who have been very generous in answering
questions, providing explanations and examples, tutorials, etc. and
creating the body of knowledge contained in this wiki.  And thank you to
the individuals who offered to take a look at my initial efforts and
with their feedback and encouragement helped make it available to the
community.

I hope some of you find this wiki useful.

Best regards,

db

[cKleinhuis]

hello, great work you did, why do not put it online ?
i could make a subdomain on fractalforums.com e.g. ultrafractalwiki.fractalforums.com, and host it
there !
 :
cheers
ck

[_db_]

Hi Christian,

Thank you for your kind words and generous offer.  It would be really nice to have the wiki online. 

There are a couple of things I would like to do that I would like your input on. 

In its present form, the wiki is in a single html page. I did this to enable searching using the browser search function. However I am concerned that the size of the single page will take too long to load so think it would be better as 1 page per topic. (and it's going to continue to grow)  This would require some other search facility since the site would need to searched rather than just the one page. Perhaps something like a Google custom search would work. 

One small addition I would like is a hit counter. I'm using Wikidpad to build the wiki and it can insert Python scripts in a page so this might be a way to go but I've never worked with scripts so am not sure what any complications might be there.

The wiki is a work in progress and need fairly frequent updates. Would I be able to do this myself? I'd prefer not to trouble you with updates.

Any thoughts on the above?

Thanks again.

Regards,

db

hello, great work you did, why do not put it online ?
i could make a subdomain on fractalforums.com e.g. ultrafractalwiki.fractalforums.com, and host it
there !
 :
cheers
ck