Path tutorial

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drei
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Path tutorial

Post by drei »

Hi guys,
We currently only have a Path_scripting tutorial in the wiki. The Path WB has been available since 0.16, but it seems new changes have been introduced to the 0.17 development version. Should we develop a tutorial for the 0.16 version based on the current stable version and videos published for it, or would it be wise to wait for the 0.17 release?
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chrisb
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Re: Path tutorial

Post by chrisb »

It would be very wise to wait for the 0.17 version. There are things in the queue waiting to be adapted to further planned changes.
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kkremitzki
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Re: Path tutorial

Post by kkremitzki »

The 0.16 vs 0.17 wiki issues are going to start popping up more and more. There's a mediawiki solution for it: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Namespaces
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NormandC
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Re: Path tutorial

Post by NormandC »

The 0.16 vs 0.17 wiki issues are going to start popping up more and more.
Oh yeah. More and more new users coming here and already on 0.17. :?

So a 0.17 page would be 0.17:Path_Workbench ?

How does the user know which one to look for? Do we clone all the pages?
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NormandC
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Re: Path tutorial

Post by NormandC »

NormandC wrote:So a 0.17 page would be 0.17:Path_Workbench ?
Or maybe dev:Path_Workbench?
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kkremitzki
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Re: Path tutorial

Post by kkremitzki »

NormandC wrote:
The 0.16 vs 0.17 wiki issues are going to start popping up more and more.
Oh yeah. More and more new users coming here and already on 0.17. :?

So a 0.17 page would be 0.17:Path_Workbench ?

How does the user know which one to look for? Do we clone all the pages?
Right, once the custom namespace is created, pages which *could* have 0.17-specific updates will now have a place to live. There's an extension:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Duplicator

that will allow pages to be easily cloned into the new namespace, although really old/big ones may need to be copy+pasted manually.

My suggestion: rather than use a 0.17 namespace, we future-proof it by calling it "dev". Then, when 0.17 releases, we can do a batch move of all dev-namespace pages into a new "stable" namespace. If that version then is no longer the stable major version but is still supported, then those pages can be moved into a numbered version like 0.17. If, instead, that version will no longer be supported, the pages could be dumped into an "unsupported" namespace. That way it is clear that the content of a wiki page may work, but is not guaranteed to do so.

That's sort of a long view, but in general, I think "dev" and "stable" should be the short-term response plan around the 0.17 release fracas.
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NormandC
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Re: Path tutorial

Post by NormandC »

kkremitzki wrote:My suggestion: rather than use a 0.17 namespace, we future-proof it by calling it "dev".
Ahem.
NormandC wrote:Or maybe dev:Path_Workbench?
;)
kkremitzki wrote:That's sort of a long view, but in general, I think "dev" and "stable" should be the short-term response plan around the 0.17 release fracas.
Seems sensible, but a lot of work, and not many people maintain the wiki's content... Then there are the translations.
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kkremitzki
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Re: Path tutorial

Post by kkremitzki »

NormandC wrote:
kkremitzki wrote:My suggestion: rather than use a 0.17 namespace, we future-proof it by calling it "dev".
Ahem.
NormandC wrote:Or maybe dev:Path_Workbench?
;)
Yeah, I took too long to write up that reply...
kkremitzki wrote:That's sort of a long view, but in general, I think "dev" and "stable" should be the short-term response plan around the 0.17 release fracas.
Seems sensible, but a lot of work, and not many people maintain the wiki's content... Then there are the translations.
Yeah, before implementing something this big I'd definitely like to test it in my staging environment and see how it impacts everything, including translations.

I don't think it's much more work beyond the long-term maintenance that would otherwise be done with documentation. Right now, if this feature were set up, current maintainers of pages could start making changes they may have already wanted to, and which may already exist in sandbox pages, which are themselves a namespace; namespaces are already in use informally. Changes to the "dev" namespace can be made up until 0.17 release, at which point it will be cleared out into "stable" which can continue to have known-good pages added to it. The "dev" namespace at that point will be mostly empty for a long time.

Anyway, we have dragged this thread quite off topic for a while. This big of a change should definitely be tested, so let's postpone further discussion until I get a working testbed set up, eh? Then I'll create a new thread for it.
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chrisb
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Re: Path tutorial

Post by chrisb »

I have to confess, that I recommend to give the 0.17 a try as soon as it comes to Path Workbench. There has been so much clarification of concepts and so much development, that I wouldn't use the 0.16 Path Workbench at all.
The situation in Path WB is different from PartDesign Next, because Part Design has a well known, well settled, well debugged stable version in 0.16, while Path Workbench hadn't reached this level of maturity.
So I wouldn't care much about the 0.16 wiki and go straight to the 0.17. I had offered to contribute to a 0.17 documentation but sliptonic stopped me doing possibly useless work because things change too fast. So we might wait a little bit longer and meanwhile point newcomers to dedicated forum threads.
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drei
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Re: Path tutorial

Post by drei »

chrisb wrote:So we might wait a little bit longer and meanwhile point newcomers to dedicated forum threads.
Seems like a sensible option to me.
kkremitzki wrote: Yeah, before implementing something this big I'd definitely like to test it in my staging environment and see how it impacts everything, including translations.
Please keep us updated on that. The idea is good, I suggest looking at how other CAD programs and companies manage their documentation and see if we can adopt any useful ideas from them.

My suggestions are to look for:
  • Solidworks documentation. It's sorted per year/release version and some stuff is blatantly copied and pasted from previous versions because changes did not occur in some areas.
  • Siemens NX documentation. Access is somewhat limited, though I have a Learning Advantage license that allows me to view the latest documentation for new releases. Documentation is handled in the same way as Solidworks: copy+paste for things that haven't changed at all.
  • SolidEdge Documentation
  • Autodesk Inventor
To wrap everything up about this discussion before it derails completely: the Path WB has experienced a considerable amount of improvements in the 0.17-dev version so it would be best to wait for the new release instead of writing a 0.16 tutorial.
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