h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

is there anywhere out there where i can get an idiots guide to guide ml. i sooooo don't get how to use it! it's driving me crazy and everyone keeps discussing it in some sort of new abbreviations language that appears to have originated from the planet goggle-di-goop. any really easy to understand advice would do? i have already been to the clinic and that made less sense( it assumes you know what it is on about).


creachy

I've been here for nearly 2years and I've never been able to use it...All I get is error messages.

same here, it won't let me use smileys when i change to it! damn evolution! it's so confusing!

Have you tried A690518 'Spicing up your userpage' ?

It gives a simple start.

i will give it a go. thankyou. wish me luck.

creachy

Good luck

i have printed that page up. it says i will see the GuideMl tags and below them i will insert my own tags. what does it mean by tags?

I go to peoples pages and type the following:
e.g My user page is at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/U200310
to check the guide ML, I go to
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/Testuserpage200310

To check the GuideML of a Guide Entry, use this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A982776
becomes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/test982776

yes?

i have just experimented and successfully drawn a smiley but now the link i used to have has become plain txt.

That is a real fresh start indeed.

tags are the words enclosed by < and >.
This are instructions for the browser or parser how to make your page.

Every entry has to start with the Guide-tag and closed with the closing tag .

And you have to set the choice 'guide-ml' and press Change Style.

maybe the best way to get some experience is not to start with your user-page.

Create a new entry just for playing with guide-ml.

I'm not sure if you've got this yet, but the tag for a smiley is this:
<SMILEY TYPE="smiley"/> (smiley can be replaced by whatever smiley you want)

you have to have selected 'guide ML' at the bottom...

Try here A187229 the Guide ML Clinic. Between that and ing bits from other user pages you should be able to find some useful bits.
As I think Justin said, if you find a user page you like, change the 'U' to 'testuserpage' and you'll get to see the ML used for that page.

TSF

If there is anything specifically that you need help with, just shout. Someone round here will be able to help you do it...

And always remember: However complicated and difficult some pages seem to be, we all started the same way:

thankyou everyone. i am kinda getting the hang of it now. although i have no hair left. no doubt i will still be asking questions but my PS is starting to take a sculptured form.

creachy

if you are a complete beginner *don't* go to the guideML clinic. go to How to Write Entries in GuideML A395552 its more basic. you can use the clinic later, but its not really designed for beginners. i learnt my first gML from the 'how to write' page and this convo - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/F75185?thread=232852 and then used the clinic page. best of luck. p.s. i think there may be some similar conversations to this one at How do I...? A242470 (check the older convos). they may have more ideas.

I was going to try and write something reassuring and wise here, but I couldn't think of anything.

So instead I'll just point out that the best way to deal with the GuideML parser giving you 'bad closing element XXXXX expecting YYYYYYY' errors is to go backwards through your page and count the number of closing YYYYY and opening YYYYY tags. If the numbers don't match, or if you find an open tag before you find a closing one (since you're going backwards), you've got a pretty good start on fixing the problem.

MaW, y unhelpfulness taken to the extreme (tm)

Having just spent a very quiet week at w*rk redesigning my userpage, I think I know what you mean MaW, but if you'd said that to me when ML meant as much to me as k,jf10ccnn##2c3 it would have made about as much sense to me as the guide ml clinic written in Dutch.
If anyone fancies writing a beginners guide I think there may be a whole bunch of people ready and waiting for it.

Any takers?

I have this problem with giving advice about some things (like GuideML) to people who have absolutely no prior experience, because I tend to assume everyone instinctively understands XML syntax - which is of course not the case.

Thus I'm not the right person to write a beginners' guide - would this be a good suggestion for a collaborative topic?