On Samples, Toolbox, Articles, and Tutorials

[STxAxTIC]

Hi guys.

Again, I love the recent energy around our curated content. Let's keep this up forever right? Anyway. So as the title suggests, it may be time to reiterate on how all the content is organized.

First thought: Toolbox is at risk to become overshadowed and redundant. I'm going to see if we have a seamless category match between what's already there, versus what we outline in Samples. When Samples is ready to swallow Toolbox, it's going to happen.

Second thought: This contains several sub-thoughts, which is actually more like a tree of thoughts ... so take a deep breath.

(i) We have an Articles section (for those who didn't know) at https://www.qb64.org/portal/articles/. Obviously it's in the wrong place, as nobody reads the actual website once they've found the forums. (ii) There is a theme to the articles we have, in the sense that they elaborate on how to use a particular class of QB64 functions together. (iii) Digging on through the forums, particularly today, I see handful of cases where keywords in combination need some elaborating on, namely the relation between _screenmove middle and _delay. (iv) There are countless similar issues, like when to scan directly for INKEY$ and when to not (to name a recent example that nailed Terry).

Corollary: We need a better articles section embedded in the forums. We can have a shrine devoted to _MEM that includes not only Luke's writing, but also Steve's videos referenced at https://www.qb64.org/forum/index.php?topic=1731.0 In the same section we can have a bunch of writing on good "combo moves" when it comes to QB64 commands. I can think of grey areas all day - like is there an ideal order to screenhide, console only, etc etc.

Third thought: This one is different, and arises because I've noticed a pattern. Especially recently, but certainly all the time,  unrelated people use BASIC/QB64 for the same exact task or a near-identical task, post their code, and then each version dissolves into forum history. For example, three different people all recently posted on linear regression. (Fitting a line to data points). Do we let each of these rot away in Programs? ... Or should we notice that this task is super-common in computing, and is obviously common in QB64, so should we put this on a pedestal? Proceeding by analogy, linear regression is very much analogous to say, sorting algorithms. Let's keep thinking... suggestions?

[STxAxTIC]

Toolbox is gone. All content shoved into appropriate child boards in Samples.

[Qwerkey]

Well, I haven't come across the word 'Corollary' since I was in maths lessons at school!

[OldMoses]

Is there any interest in a specific tutorial section, one that is not "curated" and allows some interaction on a subject covered?

[STxAxTIC]

Maybe the way to think about the curated content is to assume the author is dead, uninterested, or otherwise unavailable.

Admittedly this is my first 5 minutes on the forums in the last 4 days, so maybe things have changed a bit - but it seems that our existing boards should/will have the "tutorials" concept taken care of, given the model we're using. The thing that's missing right now is the Tutorials section itself. I was publicly mulling over how to unify the idea of articles, tutorials, off-site tutorials (namely Steve's YouTube and Terry's website altogether).

(So yes - more work is needed here - but no - I am actively preventing any Walt-isms from occurring. I ranted about that somewhere on here recently...)

[bplus]

Could post links to other resources on Homepage and ask questions, discuss points... in our discussion board.

Already have an articles section on Homepage.

[STxAxTIC]

Hey all

So I probably iterated this before - and that is (two things):

First, I'm very happy with everyone's energy and interest in keeping our best works properly presented and preserved. Round of applause for qwerky and bplus and the whole gang who helps out - you know who you are. We have a lot to do still, this has been a good start.

So onto articles/tutorials: We don't want to do this willy-nilly... We want a skeleton on which we can hang meat in a healthy, balanced, and informative way. What we must also avoid is trapping ourselves in a "category hell", and be slave to the mere file structure and categories we've chosen. (I know this speaks to some of you out there, I won't elaborate.)

A good place to look for guidance is our own forums - and that is, which questions come up very often? To name a few, we have, in no particular order of importance, frequency, or difficulty

* Capturing mouse input in a proper loop
* Capturing keystrokes with modifiers (i.e. when to use keyhit vs keydown)
* Opening large text files quickly
* Anything with _MEM
* Anything wit TCP/IP
* Anything that uses SUB GL
* Collision detection
* Pathfinding
* Interpolation
* Linked lists

... to name a few.

Maybe some of these can be tackled in a more intuitive place to look, such as the WIKI. Maybe everything except the last 3 items belong there. Maybe not. The last four items breach a near-infinite set of examples really. Is there a line, and where do we draw it? Should we limit our tutorials and articles to strictly things *about* QB64... or how to *use* QB64? These are way different sized problems.

Suggestions?

[Qwerkey]

... this has been a good start.

Yes, I agree it's a start.

* Capturing mouse input in a proper loop
* Capturing keystrokes with modifiers (i.e. when to use keyhit vs keydown)
* Opening large text files quickly
* Anything with _MEM
* Anything wit TCP/IP
* Anything that uses SUB GL
* Collision detection
* Pathfinding
* Interpolation
* Linked lists

...such as the WIKI. Maybe everything except the last 3 items belong there.

I would have thought so, but am not qualified to have any influence here.

@STxAxTIC As you know, I'm happy helping you with the Samples/Games and will carry on with that but have (virtually) zero technical skills here.  Did you want other members to help you with Articles/Wiki?

[STxAxTIC]

Good morning,

I think the process for Articles should more-or-less follow what we've got going on with all the other Samples. Let the content hang out in Programs, QB64 Discussion, or some other board - and if we find ourselves coming back to it a lot, then boom, let it be an article. Not many of our members are super verbose about documenting their codes and techniques, so Articles will be a thin section for a while. Prolly won't need any deep help with it until the need arises, but on the other hand, feel free to add stuff there.

[bplus]

So under Articles, could we just highlight a useful thread in programs, take Steve's programming custom keyboard for example, just show a link to it, it has best answer, if that not good enough then they could check the whole thread and if still not enough post a reply in that thread.

Or say the topic of pulling info off web, could we not just point a link or a number of them that are helpful on that topic.

That's what librarians should do, catalog, make things easy to find or help connect question/problem to resource.

[STxAxTIC]

So under Articles, could we just highlight a useful thread in programs, take Steve's programming custom keyboard for example, just show a link to it, it has best answer, if that not good enough then they could check the whole thread and if still not enough post a reply in that thread.

Or say the topic of pulling info off web, could we not just point a link or a number of them that are helpful on that topic.

That's what librarians should do, catalog, make things easy to find or help connect question/problem to resource.

Mmmmmmeh. Un-curated forums are the Wild West for reasons I explained already around here recently. I like the idea of extending the nicely-curated and nicely-formatted content to Articles, even if they need to be rewritten by someone with more skill in English than the original poster. Simply pointing to a different part of the forum defeats the purpose of Articles. If we want to point to a place on the forum, bump the thread. HOWEVER. Articles should be heavily cited, like real writing, where the curious person can find all of the supporting links and so on.

[Qwerkey]

@STxAxTIC Being of the Librarian Staff and not quite understanding how we will find appropriate sources for Articles, I thought that a worked example would show me what to do.  Therefore from the very informative Article "MEM Blocks by luke" I searched for the phrase “_MEM block is a predefined UDT”.  First I searched the forum for this phrase and found only the Article which you have published.  Then I searched the wiki and found nothing there.  So where exactly are you finding this (Luke must have already posted it somewhere)?  That'll give me an idea where we might find suitable stuff.

[Ashish]

@Qwerkey
There were some articles here - https://qb64.org/articles or something like that. This URL is not accessible now.
I think @odin has removed the articles from there.... Since the forum now has section for articles.

[luke]

The articles started out as my own notes on various sets of commands, because I was after a more formal reference than the wiki and didn't want to experiment each time I needed to know something.

At some point I adapted them for public consumption by adding some introductory text and formatting then someone (one of me, Fellippe or Stax, presumably) put them on https://qb64.org/articles

If people like the more formal style I'll consider taking requests for other sets of commands to write about, though I suspect most people would prefer, say, Steve's MEM tutorials for understandability.