Normalized sections for describing each pragma and attribute

Hi, I've working these days on the chapters of some pragmas, like pragma Atomic. I think that those pages of the wikibook would be more readable and complete if we follow some conventions, like a standar number of section. My proposal is:

• syntax summary
• description, specifying the pragma/attribute category (representation, configuration...) and if it is obsolescent or implementation defined.
• illustrative example
• portability:
  • between Ada versions
  • between compilers
  • between plaforms (architecture, operating system, embedded/self-hosted, uniprocessor/multiprocessor...)
• equivalent feature in other languages for interfacing (for pragmas)

The section about incorrect usage is also valuable in some cases. Please, comment, we need a consensus here! :-) —surueña 17:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

I support your proposal. It could be added to the list of conventions. ManuelGR (talk) 20:33, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Representation clauses vs. aspect clauses

See Talk:Ada Programming/Keywords/for#Representation clauses. Cheers, —surueña 17:53, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Ada humor

I thought this was a funny bit of Ada humor, and I thought I'd share. "I Have a Feeling We're Not In Emerald City Anymore" by Henry G. Baker 1997. Um ... this is a joke, right? --DavidCary (talk) 00:37, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Very funny indeed... :-) I'm still laughing. But a wikibook is nothing but a textbook, so IMO links like this one is not adequate (as well as other serious content). I suggest you to submit this link to reddit Ada, this will be well received. Cheers —surueña 18:01, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I've just sent this link to reddit Ada, cheers —surueña 10:49, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Page validation

Hi, probably you have noticed that the English Wikibooks has enabled the Page validation extension. This is designed to avoid the effects of valdalizing. Now there are two more types of users, which are able to review pages. Then, those "stable versions" are the ones seen by anonymous users, so if a page is vandalized nobody will notice (except registered users). This is a good thing IMO.

But of course not all registered users are able to review a page, only "long term users" are automatically promoted to those new user types. So probably, because not all of the contributors to the Ada wikibook have been promoted, those new changes by non-editors won't be showed until a editor review them.

I've been automatically been promoted to editor, and I've reviewed all the pages of the Ada wikibook. Also, I'll take a look regularly (at least twice a week or so) to the outdated reviewed pages of Category:Ada Programming, to approve any change of contributors. No problem, I can handle that. However, it would be a good thing if more than one person would be able to take care of this, to reduce the delay of new contributions.

Have any of you been promoted to editor? Probably doing a bunch of new edits would be enough. Cheers, and Merry Christmas! —surueña 11:09, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I'm not an editor yet. I think I meet all the criteria, except for 10 recent edits. I'll try to solve that. ManuelGR (talk) 12:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Great. You'll notice the promotion to Editor when at the bottom of pages appears a form for reviewing it (not in edit mode, but in normal mode). In that moment you'll also be able to see the outdated reviewed pages category. Cheers —surueña 17:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, surueña. I'm already an editor, it was easy. It's great how MediaWiki is improving, this one feature will be very useful for avoiding undesirable surprises. The disadvantage is that we will have to watch the wiki for reviewing new updates, since the typical vandalism was being reverted by the general Wikibooks population, but the content review might eventually only be done by book authors. Not a problem for me, since I check from time to time the changes. ManuelGR (talk) 19:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm totally agree. But it seems that you can watch the changes that await a review using an RSS feed like any other page, so this will be even easier. Cheers —surueña 22:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Estrange, this RSS feed for pending reviews doesn't seem to work, have you tried it? I'm using Google Reader... —surueña 18:43, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

More templates

Hi, I've been improving the templates, for example {{Ada/operator}} can handle automatically all cases, there is no need to use {{Ada/operator 2}} for those operators which due to MediaWiki limitations the title cannot be a special character. For example, {{Ada/operator|<}} now gives < directly, liking to Ada Programming/Operators/less than automatically with no need to write 'less_than' as another parameter.

In addition, I've created shorcuts for those templates (e.g. {{Ada/op}}) and several specific citation templates (like {{Ada/2005/Cite AARM}}, {{Ada/Cite AUJ}}, or {{Ada/83/Ref RM}}). Also, I reorganized Template:Ada (including some already existing but "forgotten" templates, like {{Ada/C/kw}}). Some of them are still missing, comments are welcome. You are encouraged to use them too! :-)

Also, I was thinking in deprecating the current family of external links templates in favor of just one with optional parameters. For example, replacing the following 6 templates Template:Ada/2005/RM1, Template:Ada/2005/RM2, Template:Ada/2005/RM3, Template:Ada/2005/RMA1, Template:Ada/2005/RMA2, and Template:Ada/2005/RMA3 for external linking to the AARM05, with just the new template {{Ada/2005/RM}} with optional parameters. But this is a big change so I want some consensus here first. Although this is a simplification, with optional parameters for the subsection numbers, note that the title is now a named parameter, so is a little more verbose:

{{Ada/2005/RM|C|3|2|title=The Package Interrupts}}

Maybe I can modify it to write the title as the first parameter

{{Ada/2005/RM|The Package Interrupts|C|3|2}}

so all parameters are positional. Anyway, the result would be the same as with the current family of templates:

C.3.2: The Package Interrupts ^[Annotated]

Of course the idea is to do the same with the Rationale and Style Guide templates. What do you think? Happy New Year! —surueña 18:42, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Top Level Discussion Page

I didn't know where to put notes that discuss the very first page of the book? The discussion page seems to be a textual dispatcher of sorts. Could someone who knows put proper advice there?