A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

Hello guys,

I have been getting to grips with wiki system admin for personal works over the weekend and it occurred to me that an Amiga coding wiki could be useful. These wikis are a _very_ nice way to collaboratively develop information for any subject - particularly when that subject already has an established forum, such as ADA.

It's evident to me that there's enough original and valuable information still being discussed by highly knowledgeable coders here at ADA to justify a central well organized database of coding ideas, tips and articles. The recent ADPCM discussions, as just one example here at ADA, are gold and should really be preserved in a more permanent organized state. A place where all that precious knowledge can be captured and refined over time and caste in stone for our children and future generations!! :-)

it's an idea but what do you guys think? I could have an Amiga coding wiki (using http://mediawiki.org) up in no time, if there's any interest...

examples:-
recently founded c64 coding wiki: http://codebase.c64.org/
mature GP2X programming wiki: http://wiki.gp2x.org/

I think it's a great idea and would help out if I can.

would be nice indeed

I agree.

I agree with doom.

ok, well that's five of us in agreement. :) so I'll get something up soon. probably the main consideration will be to decide some kind of appropriate structerue for the main page/contents to help guide people when adding content. the C64 wiki for example is sectioned very broadly on the mainpage into Sourcecode, Articles&Tutorials and External links. Not sure if that's ideal or not as I haven't given it much thought yet. so if anyone has any ideas on how to order it a little, (what initial categories should be in there), etc...feel free to suggest any ideas.

* or it could be a true wiki and begin with NO structure and just a main page of unordered links to info. people have added. then over time the categories can be created as and when needed based on what has actually been added so far? order out of chaos! hmm, not sure about that tho :)

I don't think it's a bad idea to get it started as quickly as possible. And keep some authority for yourself so you can take charge if things get out of hand. Some style guidelines wouldn't hurt of course.

the c64 wiki looks nice so why not something in that style?

This sounds like a good idea, I think something more organized like the c64 would be better than a completely unstructured style.

I'd at least break it down into System and hardware coding. Then break it down into languages maybe. Then after have Examples, sources, tuotorials etc.

The C64 wiki is nicely structured, but please don't copy the colour scheme. ;)

Btw i tried to put all old #amycoders articles on a wiki, but with my work never found time to finish it and actually announce it. Anyway here's the link: http://amycoders.potch.eu

My idea was to add all existing articles i could find (from diskmags) and put them here, but well real life sometimes eat all your time :/

Ok so most people seem to like the c64 layout, despite that putrid green theme! ;-) so I guess we'll kickoff with those three main categories for now. can easily be reorganized if it suddenly doesn't make sense.

toffeeman: this is a good idea if we're going to be encouraging nextgen "Amiga" content for the guys coding stuff with AHI/CyberGFX/TinyGL, AOS4/MorphOS (Krabob & Keiro?) and wot not. It really depends what you guys want from this wiki. I initially thought it would be a classic-Amiga demo coding archive and it only really takes one or two articles to show how to disable AmigaOS or use i t in a limited way. I have no idea how many people are really doing AOS heavy code or if there's any interest in making main categories for it? I have nothing against it personally tho...

kufa: gah, I thought I had an original thought for a change. :-) That's a nice site. I was hoping to convert all those great amycoder.org myself too.

anyway, this wiki is mostly prepared now and I've contacted Scamp to ask for some webspace so hopefully this will be up and ready for you all by th weekend...

@kufa: good work. please don't forget to add the P61 fix as well or people might forget about it once your site kicks off and we get demos with broken music again :)

\o/

I'm with it, too ... Wiki me beautiful :)

i'd still like to get this up but i was kind of banking on a donation of webspace from Scamp. but he hasn't responded, so who knows. it was looking soooo perdy too! :)

@klipper: give it some time. I'm sure you'll get your webspace.

klipper: i can donate some webspace on my homeserver, that is lighttpd with php 5.2 under obsd and 1MBit uplink (uptime is now 122 days, so not fast, but very stable connection, see http://www.yobosh.de for a (not yet existing) site running on that server). I guess this would be enough for an amiga coding wiki, wouldn't it?

Hello!

I am the webmaster of the C64 codebase wiki. Before starting this wiki I thought about whether I should make the wiki for C64 only or if I should include platforms such as Amiga/Atari/SNES and whatever too, but decided to start with the C64 only to try it out for a while before deciding what to do next. Nice to see that this has inspired people out there, and also nice to see that I wouldn't have to set up a Amiga wiki myself. ;) Anyway, I think a wiki would be a very good complement to the more unstructured forums (for natural reasons) that there seem to be a bunch of for the amiga.

...and the color scheme on the C64 codebase wiki seem to be the kind of color scheme that some people hate and some people need to survive, kind of. ;) Feel free to use a colorscheme making your wiki look like M$Word. ;)

Huhu.. Just kidding.

Let me know if you want some support or something concerning this Amiga wiki. Personally I would rather see a wiki for classic coding stuff rather than AOS4 stuff, since this older kind of information seems harder and harder to find as time passes. (On the c64 side things are different I guess, since no significantly new revisions of hardware/kernal were ever released really after the initial models in the 80s).

The C64 Codebase Wiki:
http://codebase.c64.org

(Anyone got a ROM for A570/A690 btw? Please get in touch with me. Sorry for being off topic)

I see your point about OS4, but I also see no need to limit the wiki. You can have article categories such as "Classic hardware programming", "System programming", "OS2.x+", "OS3.x+", "OS4.x+", and since articles can be part of more than one category its easy to keep everything organised correctly.

Sure! I agree completely.

Hello everybody!

I'm pleased to announce that Scamp has kindly donated the webspace and that the new wiki – called the Amiga Coding Archive - is now up and running! The url is:

http://aca.untergrund.net

I've taken Xeron and Toffeman's comments into consideration and altered the c64 Codebase structure a little to separate System & API related articles/sourcecode, to allow more scope for next-gen Amiga related stuff. But overall it still maintains the c64 Codebase layout that most seem to like. Hopefully it pleases everyone at least a little bit!  Within the main categories (articles & tutorials, source, external links) I've hinted at main headings and sub-headings but you can easily alter all this and add your own headings and rearrange stuff. Let me know if you think I need to make drastic changes to the structure as the earlier that's done the better really...

Btw its name, Amiga Coding Archive, is no coincidence and was chosen in homage to its background here on the Amiga Demo Archive. :-) (hopefully z5 doesn't mind!)

I need to sort out a few things. For one, the email notification system (which offers some nice automated user email alert features) is not working. This is due to Scamp's servers using PHP v4 in SafeMode and a nice little bug in this not-so-new version of MediaWiki I have to use. :/ I'll have to look at the PHP scripts, hopefully I can patch this up.

But apart from that it should be fully functional and ready to go. So it's there and it's yours - feel free to help me add content, promote it, dismiss it, forget about it, leave it to rot the server, etc! :-) Be a part of this fantastic wiki-revolution! (eerr)

FTC: I love your green wiki, radioactive wiki power ftw! :-) You're right, they're great for storing/organizing/capturing random forum info. Especially if people learn to use it hand-in-hand with the forum. Whether they do actually want to use it alongside the forum is another thing, of course. :) But I think both the c64 CSDb forum and the ADA forums here have the advantage of having very knowledgeable people willing and happy to share ideas, which is cool.

god, now i really must sleep!! :-(

@klipper: good work. To be honest, i don't really like the "wiki look" (nothing you can do about) but the logo (the cubes) and texture look really nice.

Now comes the hardest part: adding content :o)

I hope this forum will remain active though.. I don't know if we can fill a wiki even if it is a nice buzzword technology :)

yes. the forum owns!

I see the forum as a way of feeding the wiki. If you have a coding question, you ask the forum.

The answers to those questions can be added to the wiki.

i find the forum much more apealling than wikis... but wiki can help archive stuff like common tricks and tutorials

not sure how there could be but just incase there is any doubt: the wiki is not meant as any sort of replacement for the forum. :-) like Xeron/Winden said, wikis should compliment by organizing random thread discussions. Or maybe you have a more substantial response to someone's question in the forum, then you could write-up something in the wiki and post a nice wiki link which is not only useful while the forum thread is in focus (ie, among the "most recent" articles) but also to anyone in the future reading the more organized wiki.

I for one wouldn't want to use a wiki like a forum, that's not their purpose. Long live the forums!! ;-)

OK, I've ripped a freedir tunnel article out of the trashcan datafiles and uploaded to aca. I'd love some design help to format it properly for wiki.