Suggestion

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Martin Dixon wrote:

> Hi :)
> The recent advice has been a great help - it has even encouraged me
> to create some real "bugs";
> my next stage was to progress to implementing the solutions I have
> identified - this step really bugs me!
 
> I like the idea of a sandbox - I don't want to damage my own
> system, or anyone else's work (past or current) -
> I have turned up some details to various "boxes" so please could
> someone add some gems on this - which "box" and how?

I feel a book coming on. Hopefully it's not more than you asked for:

<book>

I think the sandbox in question was for the Ubuntu wiki. There are a
few ways you can sandbox the wiki:

- When you're in edit mode, there's a preview button which makes it
  so that you can look at your changes while still having the editor
  open. This way you can make changes again before doing the final
  save on the page.

- Each user gets their own personal page in the Ubuntu wiki (or at
  least they did back when I first signed on), and you can copy the
  contents of any page you want to work on into that page and do your
  thing to it before putting the changes on the actual page. This can
  be especially useful for really long pages that you're doing major
  edits to, and will need to spend several days on.

- You can download a copy of MoinMoin and run it in standalone mode
  on your computer (without serving it out on the internet) as a
  private wiki. You can create as many new pages as you like and
  paste the contents of any Ubuntu wiki page into it to make changes
  to it before posting them officially online.

NOTE: Beware that with the last two methods, someone else may make
changes to the page in question while you have a copy of it in your
online sandbox or in your personal wiki. You'll want to compare the
current contents of the page with your contents for the page when
you're ready to replace them. I highly recommend Meld for this, and
it's available in the package manager.

If you go with the standalone wiki, you'll want to go to this page in
the Ubuntu wiki to check which version of MoinMoin it's using:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SystemInfo

Then follow these steps to get it and set it up:

http://paste.ubuntu.com/6116557/

NOTE: This is HTML code, so you'll want to download it into a text
file and save it with an .htm or .html extension so you can open it
in your browser.

==========

If you were looking for a DocBook or Mallard sandbox, that's any text
file or files anywhere on your computer. You would just follow the
instructions for creating a DocBook or Mallard document from DocBook:

http://www.docbook.org/tdg/

Or Mallard:

http://projectmallard.org/

Then make sure you have the yelp package installed (I think it's
installed by default in Ubuntu). To look at (and use) any document
you create, type yelp FILENAME in a terminal window, or you can
associate certain file types (like .page) with yelp and double-click
to open them.

==========

If you were looking for a Bazaar sandbox, that's any repository
(directory created with the bzr branch command, for example) on your
computer. You can get the Ubuntu repository with a specific branch
command (either a command you found at the top of a Launchpad page or
one given to you by a Documentation Team member). Then use a file
manager or the command line to copy the directory to another
location. Then use that directory as your sandbox to do some
experimenting. You can do many bzr commands without doing any
harm (just avoid bzr push or any other bzr command that puts your
files back onto the Launchpad server). To learn Bazaar, see:

http://bazaar.canonical.com/en/

Once you're comfortable with it, I highly recommend making yourself a
cheat sheet with the steps you need to take to "git 'er done" so you
don't forget any when you're not in the safety of the sandbox.

</book>

> Also points raised today by Doug re lenses suggest that we may not
> all be "singing to the same sheet" -
> the experts obviously know what's going on, but for newbies the only
> real thing is the live system (say 13.04)
> and its associated help docs, etc.  Where is Saucy hiding and how to
> find her intimate help docs?

https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-doc/ubuntu-docs/saucy

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.