I tried the Freeciv-manual.exe that comes with versions 2.3.x and 2.4.x and it doesn't come out right.
I got empty pages and scrambled ones too due to the coding - instead of 'western europe (windows)' it should be UTF-8, for instance.
and then, the images don't show. Among other things...
I'm really interested in getting the Terrain and Building charts as they are different from earlier versions.
As sugested, I sent the error messages to gna.org, but I don't know what kind of language they speak...
Maybe we can get some answers here in the good old forum.freecic.org!
I'll try to look into fixing freeciv-manual to 2.4.1 (its problems are not going to block 2.4.0 release now that we're in release candidates phase). By "trying" I mean I have to invent some more hours to my days to do that among all the other things I've already committed to...
It's probably worth noting that freeciv-manual, even when working as designed, is probably going to be a bit disappointing to end users. Really, all it's useful for at the moment is as a helper to keep pages on the central wiki like this one up-to-date with new releases (and we haven't actually done so for several releases). We probably shouldn't even be shipping it.
Some of its issues:
While its output is called manualX.html, it's not really HTML, it's fragments of MediaWiki markup (some of which is HTML). So while the pages display in a web browser, they look mangled.
(This probably explains your character encoding trouble -- there's no declaration of that, or even a <html> opening tag.)
Similarly, the generated content references images that are assumed to exist in the context of a wiki, so it's not self-contained.
Of ruleset things, only covers buildings/wonders and terrain, and not e.g. units and governments.
All these things could be rectified -- clearly people would find a standalone game manual useful -- but personally I concentrate limited effort on improving the in-game help at the moment.
All that said, the current crop of bugs causing error messages (that will be fixed) only affect the server options page (manual1.html). All the other generated pages (including terrain and buildings) are as good as they're likely to get.
JTN wrote:It's probably worth noting that freeciv-manual, even when working as designed, is probably going to be a bit disappointing to end users. Really, all it's useful for at the moment is as a helper to keep pages on the central wiki like this one up-to-date with new releases (and we haven't actually done so for several releases). We probably shouldn't even be shipping it.
I consider custom ruleset authors "end-users" of what we ship (clearly end-user of the ruleset is another thing). As an ruleset author I would find working freeciv-manual to produce html for ruleset homepage useful. But I agree that in general in-game help has higher priority, and freeciv-manual improvements should be about low-hanging fruits only (I think something can be easily done in conjunction with freeciv-ruledit development, as the bugfix I already made shows).
For Freeciv project, I'd like to get pages about the new supplied rulesets to wiki (civ2civ3 in 2.5, alien in 2.6). Classic ruleset is less important in that there's at least old pages present, and they are not that outdated (practically when freeciv engine gets new ruleset modding features, they are added to classic ruleset with values corresponding to old hardcoded behavior)
I can understand your priorities allright. But these "minor" things are important to a lot of newbies, even to not so-newbies.
That's where we could come in. Fer inztanz: I have been updating the "Terrain Values" from workers to engineers. From older versions to the Amplio series.
Now we have the "default3" and that's another ball game. If we could have some tips, we could tackle those "minor" priorities.
Maybe in my 'Coffee Shop" Post?
JTN: have you clicked the "this one" button? Oh Boy!
Comment about that latest edit is: "Same probkem as in Wonders, same hack"
and Wonders edit comment: "Move "other languages" to the left, stacked side bars floating right cannot work with a full width table breaking their floating attempts"
