Web-based interface to campaign server

[Dave]

Our newest developer, bruno, has developed a web-based interface to the campaign server. The interface is available at http://campaigns.wesnoth.org.

This interface also displays some new fields that bruno has made available on the campaign server, such as description, available translations, and last updated time. Campaign developers may re-upload their campaigns with these fields to make them available.

I'd like to thank bruno for his excellent work on this.

David

[GregorR]

/me hails bruno as a god.

Hmm ... my list of polytheistic gods is constantly increasing.

[scott]

Cool. The icon column should be shrunk.

[turin]

Just so everyone knows, you don't put "last_updated=" or anything like that in the .pbl file. It is automatically generated by the server.

[bruno]

For information about what you should be putting in the PBL file you should check out http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/BuildingCampaignsThePBLFile if you haven't looked at it very recently.
I have updated over the last couple of weeks to explain description, elaborate on icon, version and and author.
If you want to read more about how to communicate with the campaign server using WML (which most of you probably don't) you can read http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/CampaignServerWML to read about the request and response WML tags and attributes.

[bruno]

Cool. The icon column should be shrunk.

The column sizes aren't specified and are picked by your browser. Most likely your browser has to make that column wider to display the alt tags for the unretrievable images for developers that either made a mistake when they uploaded their campaign or had an icon path renamed after they were using it. There are also a couple campaigns that don't have an icon.
I tried to contact a number of these people, but not a lot of change happened as a result. Hopefully the extra publicity will help convince people to fix their stuff.

[freim]

Yeah, it would be nice if people would fix their broken icons. I guess I always can edit the ones that are unmaintained.

[lwa]

The column sizes aren't specified and are picked by your browser. Most likely your browser has to make that column wider to display the alt tags for the unretrievable images for developers that either made a mistake when they uploaded their campaign or had an icon path renamed after they were using it. There are also a couple campaigns that don't have an icon.

What the alt tag is supposed to mean ?
Just use ALT="".

Culumn size should be defined to avoid a campaign to deform the whole table.

Also, rules between rows and collumns should be drawed.

It's a good interface, anyway.

[freim]

What the alt tag is supposed to mean ?
Just use ALT="".

Culumn size should be defined to avoid a campaign to deform the whole table.

Also, rules between rows and collumns should be drawed.

It's a good interface, anyway.

From HTML 4.01 Specification:

alt = text [CS]
For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets, this attribute specifies alternate text. The language of the alternate text is specified by the lang attribute.

The alt tag is required to comply with the standard. Using alt="" is not good.

[lwa]

From HTML 4.01 Specification:

alt = text [CS]
For user agents that cannot display images, forms, or applets, this attribute specifies alternate text. The language of the alternate text is specified by the lang attribute.

The alt tag is required to comply with the standard. Using alt="" is not good.

I know "alt" semantic in HTML, but when it has no semantic in the document, it should be empty, as HTML specification tell it (§ 13.8 )

Code: Select all

 While alternate text may be very helpful, it must be handled with
   care. Authors should observe the following guidelines:
     * Do not specify irrelevant alternate text when including images
       intended to format a page, for instance, alt="red ball" would be
       inappropriate for an image that adds a red ball for decorating a
       heading or paragraph. In such cases, the alternate text should be
       the empty string (""). Authors are in any case advised to avoid
       using images to format pages; style sheets should be used instead.
     * Do not specify meaningless alternate text (e.g., "dummy text").
       Not only will this frustrate users, it will slow down user agents
       that must convert text to speech or braille output.

[freim]

I know "alt" semantic in HTML, but when it has no semantic in the document, it should be empty, as HTML specification tell it (§ 13.8 )

Yes, but then in this case this would mean a column with a header, but no content. Thats not very good either imo. Would be better to have the icon as part of the title column, then using alt="" would be perfectly fine.

Edit: I probably should have said I think using empty alt tags in this particular case aren't quite appropriate. I see now how it could seem like I meant it universially which I of course don't

[lwa]

Yes, but then in this case this would mean a column with a header, but no content. Thats not very good either imo. Would be better to have the icon as part of the title column, then using alt="" would be perfectly fine.

The colunm could be removed according the media using CSS (but most text only browser don't support CSS well). Anyway, a "Icon" column in
a text browser is meaningless. The user probably don't bother of its content.

Edit: I probably should have said I think using empty alt tags in this particular case aren't quite appropriate. I see now how it could seem like I meant it universially which I of course don't

If arbitrary long tags generate bad side effects like very long column for a small icon, if should be fixed.

[freim]

If arbitrary long tags generate bad side effects like very long column for a small icon, if should be fixed.

Yes, thats why I think the best solution would be to merge icon and title and use alt="".

[lwa]

If arbitrary long tags generate bad side effects like very long column for a small icon, if should be fixed.

Yes, thats why I think the best solution would be to merge icon and title and use alt="".

Why not.
You can also remove the "Icon" culumn title.

[bruno]

Part of the problem is that campaign designers are using broken image links. Those should be fixed. I have already tried contacting campaign owners where I could figure out their forum names and while I got several replies, there wasn't much campaign updating that happened as a result.

I feel that the icons do provide a feel for the campaigns (I think that is the whole point) and the names of the icons typically match what the icon is and makes sense to use in the alt tag for text only browsers or as a fallback when the image can't be loaded.