Help:Editing guidelines

This page describes standards, structures and techniques that are utilised in this wiki. It is recommended to conform to these in order to maintain information consistency and accessibility. However, nothing bad will happen if you do not. The standards are not tightly settled nor thoroughly thought, however they were changed many times through the page development, and are still imperfect. This means that they may changed again if there is a need for that. This also means that the rules may be broken whenever it is reasonable. Feel free to discuss the issues and ideas on the discussion pages.

Namespaces

Currently the FileInfo uses three namespaces (not counting the wiki maintenance namespaces):

• LBA1 - for LBA 1 contents
• LBA2 - for LBA 2 stuff
• Main - for common and other stuff

The rule is simple: everything that belongs to only one LBA version should go to appropriate LBA namespace, everything that belongs to both LBAs or does not belong to any of them should go to the Main namespace. Here are some examples and exceptions:

• HQR files and entries always go to LBA namespaces, because LBAs do not share files, even if some files have the same names (like ress.hqr, which has different content). This allows some entries to have identical names and still be described in different pages (like Main game palette).
• Programs always go to the Main namespace, because even if a program supports only one LBA version, it still does not belong to that version (e.g. support for the other version may be added in future).
• A File type should go to one of the LBA namespaces if it is used by one LBA version only, but it should go to the Main namespace if it is used by both LBAs. If both LBAs use a similar (but not identical) format for the same purpose (like isometric scene), it should be split into two pages with the same name, but each in its own namespace. In this case they may share the specification (that points out differences).

Categories

FileInfo categories not only organize content, but also, for HQR entries, define belonging to a specific HQR file, that's why in some cases it is important to maintain categories properly.

In automatic HQR presentation model (see below) each HQR file entry, must be in a category named identically as the HQR file it belongs to. For example, and entry (page) named Main game palette that belongs to Ress.hqr file (from LBA 1) must belog to Category:LBA1:Ress.hqr, otherwise it will not show on the LBA1:Ress.hqr page. This does not apply to manual presentation model, but existing entry pages should also follow this rule for consistency (and for easier possible switch to automatic model of that HQR file in future).

The main category structure is following:

• LBA1 - everything related to LBA 1
• LBA2 - everything related to LBA 2
• HQR files - HQR file and entry pages
  • LBA1:Anim.hqr
  • LBA1:Body.hqr
  • LBA2:Anim.hqr
  • LBA2:Body.hqr
  • ... and so on
• VOX files - same as HQR files
• ILE files
• OBL files
• File formats
• Programs

In the future there will be categories for images and other files, but there are none for now.

File format pages

The file format pages describe various file formats - all useful formats that exist in LBA installation directories (though describing some formats, like EXE, is probably pointless), and those that can be extracted from them. Infobox format template exists to provide infobox for the format pages. Example usage:

{{Infobox format
| extension = LSP
| lba1 = true
| lba2 = true
| colour = E0E000
| defaultsort = image
}}

• extension - is the commonly used extension the files of that format have when stored on a disk. Most of the extracted files extensions are made up by the LBA community.
• lba1 and lba2 - indicate occurence of files of this format in specific LBA version.
• colour = colour the extension will have in various lists (like entries list in a HQR page). The colour is in HTML notation, but without the # mark (named colours are not allowed).
• defaultsort - sets the wiki's {{DEFAULTSORT:xxx}} directive, which is used to change the way the page will be sorted in category listings. In this example, without defaultsort, the page would appear under L (because the page name is LBA image). The defaultsort param makes it appear under I.

Format pages should contain format specification, if it is known.

HQR pages

Each HQR (VOX, ILE, OBL) file has its own page, which contains description, various information, and list of entries stored inside the file. There are two presentation models possible:

• Automatic model - works so each HQR entry has its own page, that defines its properties, and HQR page contains only general Semantic Mediawiki query that fetches all appropriate pages automatically. This model highly depends on the Semantic Mediawiki extension features. Entry pages define properties, like index, name, extension, etc. for each entry, and HQR page reads the properties and puts them into the entries table. This model requires all entries of the HQR to have their own pages.
• Manual model - works so each entry is described manually in the HQR page's source. This makes it easy to create HQR pages containing hundreds of entries, because the entry pages do not have to exist. Disadvantage of this model is that when a described entry page is created (to give more details on that entry), the HQR page will most likely need an update with that entry. Also if the file format of an entry is changed, one will have to manually update the HQR format counters.

For easier creation a special template is present, called hqr page. Below is an example usage:

{{hqr page
| lba = 1
| providers = [[provider::El Muerte]], [[provider::alexfont]], [[provider::ChaosFish]] and [[provider::Zink]]
| normal = 53
| blank = 1
| type1 = Sprite actor data
| type2 = LBA1:Holomap location file
| type3 = LBA1:Animation
| type4 = In-game font
| text =
This file contains various game resources: the font, textures, some generic models, etc.
}}

The above is an example of the automatic model. The model setting is not present, because it is automatic by default. It takes the following parameters:

• lba - LBA version (1 or 2)
• providers - list of people that discovered the information about the HQR file. Each name must be an SMW property set statement. In future this may be used for statistics, and browsing information by providers.
• normal, blank, repeated, hidden - describe number of entries of each type in the HQR (values of 0 can be omitted). Hidden value is an exception, because it does not have to be a numerical value. For pages like LBA1:xx_005.vox the number of

{{hqr page
| mode = manual
| lba = 2
| hqr file = LBA2:ress.hqr
| normal = 32
| repeated = 8
| blank = 9
| type1 = Sprite actor data       | count1 = 1
| type2 = In-game font            | count2 = 1
| type3 = Colour palette          | count3 = 3
| type4 = LBA2:3D model           | count4 = 1
| type5 = LBA image               | count5 = 26
| type6 = LBA2:Movie index        | count6 = 1
| type7 = LBA2:Shape file         | count7 = 1
| type8 = LBA2:Entity information | count8 = 1
| type9 = Unknown entry           | count9 = 14

| text =
This file contains various game resources: the font, images, textures, some generic models, etc.
}}