Internal:Improvements to the Wiki

Requests for improvements to the Analytica wiki.
Please add "done" and your initials, after completing each item.

New tasks

  • Check on search log Search queries log, download, remove queries by us if possible, and list common search terms. Check whether they result in good results. Those that don't either add a new page or redirect page from the term to something useful.
  • For pages with noise terms such as "Using Expressions". In long term it would be nice to rename as "Expressions" but that woudl require a lot of changing links. So for now, lets create a new page "Expressions" that redirects to "Using Expressions". Same for all other pages in User Guide with noise terms at the start of the name.
  • Check out the subpage facility. It should work on the named domains e.g. Analytica:, but not main pages until we switch it on. Let's see what the breadcrumbs look like and how well this mechanism works for organizing pages into a hierarchy, and whether we want to use it int the main name space.

General

  • Remove "Analytica" from most text and especially page titles e.g. The Analytica Domain Attribute should be just Domain attribute. This is the Analytica wiki so just about everything is about Analytica. Only mention "Analytica" when explicitly comparing it to other computer languages or modeling tools. If we need to say what Analytica does, we can usually just write "it": For example, instead of "Analytica displays this dialog" (or "This dialog is displayed"), we should write "It displays this dialog".
    • I tried to move The Analytica Domain Attribute to Domain attribute but got the error: "You do not have permission to move this page, for the following reason: A page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid. Please choose another name." Can this be resolved by deleting the existing Domain attribute page that currently only contains a redirect link, and then trying to move again? I do not have delete-page permissions. BB.
    • Done, BB (Karen gave me the required permissions)

Specific pages

Analytica Wiki home page

  • Should have a page for Professional edition, so the line that says "Free 101, Enterprise, Optimizer" also lists Professional.
    • Is there some existing content that can be used for the Professional edition page? I can the create the page and use it for inter-linking. BB

Editions of Analytica

  • Move the comparison table to the top of the page, with descriptions of each edition below.
    • Done, BB
  • Add columns for ACP, and Cubeplan. See [1] for info on ACP. MH to provide checkmarks for Cubeplan.
    • Done; please verify and correct (the table on the Lumina website uses fewer comparision features); BB
  • To comparison table of features, add a column for ACP. If not enough room, remove Power Player
    • Done, BB
  • Add links from each Feature title in table that doesn't have one as appropriate, including hierarchical influence diagrams, Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis, Excel read write functions, Integration functions (new ch in User Guide). Optimization engine (link to Optimization user guide).
  • Use green checkmarks and red Xs as in the Comparison table on Analytica Cloud Player.
    • Done, BB

Class

Analytica Specifications

Functions by category

  • Add all other System variables to relevant section
    • Is there a complete list of system variables that could be used for this? BB
  • Link and add all Attributes (possibly excluding obscure internal attributes) in Attributes section.
    • Is there a complete list of attributes that could be used for this? BB
  • Complete the Libraries section at the end: List all standard libraries, and list functions in each library.
    • Where is that Libraries section? BB

Retitle tutorial pages

Include "Tutorial: " in all titles so it's obvious each is in the tutorial in links from other places, and rename to focus on topic/feature rather than name of the model:

  • Obviously, this will mean quite a bit of work changing links to Tutorial pages from other pages.

Analytica User Group

  • Rename to "Video tutorials". Done.
    • That page has been renamed to Tutorial videos, I think that Video tutorials sounds better. BB
    • It is a long list that could be sectioned into subpages or otherwise. BB
    • The archived videos (linked at Archived webinars and elsewhere) are stored on analyticaonline.com Do we want to move them to wiki or not? BB
  • Present as a list of Analytica video tutorials on key topics, not as a "historical archive of webinars"
  • Review and edit webinar listings to make them shorter and clearer:
    • Review video: Edit out any initial section that is black, waiting to start, etc. This will put most people off from watching. If the video is not of decent quality, move the whole item to Archived videos.
    • Remove "Webinar" from title as redundant.
    • First item after title should be the abstract/summary, followed by link to video.
    • Remove subtitle "Abstract". That's obvious.
    • Edit abstract to make it shorter and sweeter
    • Add links from abstract to any key concepts/features with their own pages
    • Add reciprocal links from those pages in See also, labeled "Video Tutorial on ..."
    • Instead of "Watch a recording of this webinar from <>" say simply "Watch video at <>"
    • A single line at the bottom of each should say "Webinar presented by Lonnie Chrisman, CTO, Lumina on 10 Mar 2012" (or whatever), to replace the multiple lines and irrelevant detail above.
    • See "Analytica Cloud Player (ACP)", "Expression Assist", "Basics of Analytica arrays and Indexes" as most recent example which I have edited to illustrate the proposed reformat listed above.
  • Remove "Recent talks" subhead with dates (which implies that we've had no webinars since 2012!)
  • Remove "Schedule of Upcoming webinars" especially focusing on past, ungiven webinars. We notify people in the Newsletter.
  • For each webinar:
  • Move out-of-date webinars or ones with poor quality videos to Archived videos as I moved New Features in Analytica 4.4" and "Analytica web player"

Standard libraries , Additional libraries and Examples

  • I split Analytica Libraries and Templates into Standard libraries Libraries distributed with Analytica and Additional libraries Libraries of Analytica functions not distributed with Analytica
  • Make sure that Standard libraries and Example models are consistent with the libraries and example models distributed with Analytica, including:
    • Files/models have the same names
    • Make sure that the download links contain the latest version of each file.
    • The Descriptions in the wiki are the same as the Descriptions in the models. (Someone should write an Analytica function that automatically goes through the libraries and examples and generates a list of the file names (and folders in which examples are organized) along with the descriptions, that we can use in these wiki pages.
    • Add a list of index keywords to each library or example to assist users in searching for relevant items in the wiki.
    • Preferably, each library should list the names of all functions described in that library to be included in the wiki.
    • Move obsolete libraries to an Obsolete folder and section.

Numbers

Add See also Number formats

  • Done, BB

Fix remaining issues from import of PDF docs

There are still several remnants from PDF docs that need to be resolved.

  • Some text in User Guide refers to the Analytica wiki as in Complex number functions. "The scalar functions listed here are specific to complex numbers. For more details on using complex numbers, see Complex Numbers on the Analytica Wiki, and “Complex Numbers” in the User Guide." Change to links and remove reference to "Analytica wiki" and "User Guide", here. And search for similar issues for "Analytica wiki" and "User Guide" elsewhere.

General style issues

These issues might be moved into the Wiki style guidelines.

  • Most pages should have an introductory paragraph introducing the topic at the top, with no "Introduction" heading, so that it appears above the "Contents" section. In most cases, this simply means moving the __TOC__ to after the introduction paragraph and deleting the "Introduction" heading if any. If there is an intro of many paragraphs, we can simply move the first paragraph to the top above the _TOC_.
    • I have moved TOC on top of the page, unless the introductory paragraph is very short (1-2 sentences). BB
  • All screenshots and tables should be indented (or centered) in the page. For some reason, adding center to the
    • I have indented by one tab all screenshots, tables and code, and will fix the remaining cases as I encounter them. BB

Links between pages

Meta-Inference

  • What needs to be done? BB

Pages to merge into User Guide

Here are some priority pages to include links from the User Guide. Move Introduction to SubTables Move SubTable Move MultiTable into

Pages to move out of main namespace

Pages in the main namespace can be seen by anyone. Any pages with ideas, plans or designs for future versions of Analytica should be in the Analytica: or Internal: namespaces.

Analytica.NET describes plans for Analytica, not current features. There is already a (near?) duplicate page Internal:Analytica.NET. Check with Lonnie whether we can just delete Analytica.NET

Class and Interface Declarations is another part of Analytica.NET and duplicates Internal: Class and Interface Declarations , so should be deleted.

Content issues

Other array functions Example for "Subset" looks wrong. Ask Lonnie to review and fix it if needed. There should also be an example with Subset(x) taking 1 parameter.

  • The Example for Subset is identical to the example used in the pdf User Guide. BB

Analytica Optimizer Guide

  • This guide (and possibly other pages imported from PDF docs, contain URL links like
    [http://wiki.analytica.com/index.php?title=DefineOptimization DefineOptimization]
    These should be replaced by direct wiki links, like
    [[DefineOptimization]]
    • Done, BB
  • I renamed (moved) most of its sections adding "Optimizer" into their titles.
  • Optimizer Function Reference contains three subsections.
  • I merged the first Using Named parameters into the second
  • I put the second and third as main sections within the Outline, instead of having Optimizer Function Reference with subsections.
  • I also renamed (moved) several of the main sections to new page titles that mention Optimizer.
  • Optimizer control settings contains many subsections. Please combine them all into their single parent page, and delete the subsections.
  • Make sure all the Footer links link correctly to the preceding and following sections, using their new titles (i.e. instead of old redirects).

Duplicate or overlapping pages

There are many pages that overlap or are almost duplicates, usually one from the User Guide and a pre-existing wiki page covering the same topic, as we can see in [[Category: Windows and dialogs]]. For example Graph templates from the User Guide and Graph Style Templates pre-existing.

  • Usually the User Guide page is the best initial page for user to view since it has been edited and kept uptodate. But, the pre-existing page sometimes has additional detail or examples.
  • In some cases, the old wiki page contains only a screenshot, such as Node Style Dialog, and the other is a page in the User Guide, such as Node Style dialog. In these cases, the old wiki page shoudl have content deleted and it should be made into a redirect to the second page.
  • For Indexes dialog, there is a page with only screenshot. It should redirect to To edit a table subsection Add an index, and it would be nice to add screenshot of Index dialog here, with a little text explaining how to use it. And/or link to Indexes and arrays: An introduction, which does show Indexes dialog.
  • Note that the Analytica application has a link from each dialog box ("?" in window header in recent version of Analytica) usually to a page that contains only the screenshot. So we need to retain those pages as redirect to the corresponding pages in the User Guide.
    • Simply add a "See also" in User Guide page linking to pre-existing page. (Bleu already did this in many cases)
  • If the two pages names are very similar (for many they just have different capitalization), change the name of pre-existing page from X to "More on X" or "X details". Add a link at the top of the page saying "This page adds more details for X" (to make it easy for user to jump to the User Guide page X.
  • In some cases, the redirect is more complex: E.g. Result Window - Graph and Result Window - Table should both be redirected to Result window, which covers both.
    • Done, BB
  • If the pre-existing page has no extra information or examples, just delete it. Change any links to the User Guide page.
  • * In some cases, such as Preferences Dialog, the wiki (non-user guide) page contains useful content. So we should review it carefully to see if it contains anything useful not already in the User guide page. If it does, the extra information should be added into the user guide page, before replacing the first page by a redirect. In the long run we should either:
    • Delete most of the duplicate information from pre-existing page, and keep links from new page. Rename the page from X to "More on X"
    • Transfer the useful non-duplicate info from the pre-existing page onto the User Guide page. Then delete the pre-existing page, or make it into a redirect to the User Guide page.
    • But, either of these projects are complex and time-consuming, so let's not do that for now.

Scripting Guide

This was an initial PDF document converted to the Wiki. The wiki version of the document has several problems. Fixing these is a lower priority, since few people use these pages.

  • They have a line at the top and bottom of page with links
     prev page > This page > Next page
  • It might be easiest to use the Wikimedia subpage scheme, and rename these pages:
   Analytica Script
   Analytica Script/Introduction
   Analytica Script/Files

and so on. 

   Analytica Script/Objects and attributes

   Analytica Script/Arrays

   Analytica Script/Language summary

These pages may duplicate stuff on system variables, objects and attributes elsewhere, but it may be timeconsuming to combine and dedup them.

General reorganization and clean up

Typography and format

  • Code, usually Analytica expressions, use the format markup. This looks fine in Firefox and Internet Explorer, but the code shows up in small font on Chrome. See if we can find a way to fix this. One method is simply to use a space at the start of each line, which is the standard way to markup code.
Like this. 
It puts the text into an indented box
  • I have been using indented code
Like this.
Indented, without the box.

or preformatting 

Like this. 
Indented, without the box.

The font looks the same size in Chrome.

  • Done, BB

Tables

Most tables use an ugly format with two lines separating each cell, like this: 


Let's change all these to use class="wikitable", which looks like this:
Year → 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Earnings→ 4.5M 5.6M 6.6M 7.9M 9.0M 10.1M


See Associative_vs._Positional_Indexing for more examples.

  • Done, BB

New in which release?

  • Many features say which release introduced them as in "New in Analytica 4.3", usually at the top of the page. This information often goes back to releases long past and is of no interest to most users. In most cases, we can just delete this information if the version is older than the last release -- e.g. release 4.4 after release 4.6. For the last release, or in rare cases where older releases may be of interest to some users, let's move this information to the end of the page under subhead "New in which release?". For example:

This feature was introduced in Analytica 4.3, modified with a new option Gorp in Analytica 4.4.


Creating Arrays (Tables) This contains 8 pages that follow Chapter 5 from the Analytica Tutorial, a rather old version according the the screenshots (dated Sep 2007). It's not clear what the value is of having this in the Analytica wiki, since it's more accessible in the Tutorial. If we want to retain in wiki, it should be updated, and given links from each page to the next. Otherwise, let's just delete it.

Index pages

There are several pages like the home page Analytica User FAQs that are simply a list of links. Modify so that:

  • The links should be simple text, not headings (as they are in some)
  • Organize the links into logical groups under subheadings.
  • Unless the name of the link is self-explanatory, there should be a phrase next to each link to explain what kind of material it contains.

ana:test page alpha