Introduction to editing on CB1's on-line city project

The streetplan system allows users to add and edit entries from any forms-capable browser. This is ``safe'' in that the alterations are not committed to the datafiles until the streetmaster merges them in; they are added to ``new changes'' file which is scanned each time the main CGI script reads a data file.

There are three main editing operations you can do from a browser, two of which work already. These are

1. editing an existing entry
2. adding a dummy (blank) entry ready for editing it
3. adding a street

More obscure operations include

1. deleting surplus dummy entries
2. adding and editing graphics and colours

Editing an existing entry

First, locate the entry you want, either by normal browsing from the top level of the streetplans, or by searching for it, or by picking it from the engineers' list.

Having got to the right entry, you can either zoom in to it (if the way you got there hasn't pre-zoomed it) and then select the editable version of it (using the [edit] link at the bottom of the page), or simply select the editable version of the whole page without zooming first.

Alternatively, if you've always wanted to turn up at your workplace in a JCB, you can navigate from the top level with editing on all the way.

You should now be looking at an HTML form with a few boxes to edit. Edit these appropriate, being careful not to lose any double-quote marks at the start and end of each value, and not to have any unescaped qoutes inside the values (or the keys, for that matter). If you want to include a double-quote mark inside a value, escape it with a backslash.

There will be at least

• a name field (so you can be included in the contributors list; later there may also be passwording to let trusted people enter things directly into the main data files)
• a text area with the key="value" pairs that define the entry -- see the list of field types for possible key values.

There may also be some individual boxes for particular fields, for some entry types; for example, opening times for shops, and what they provide, as a kind of heavy hint that this information is wanted. Values in these override any from the general definitions text area.

Adding a side-road

If you turn an entry into a side-road, please give it a link field to indicate the road file it leads to. If the side-road isn't yet in the database, you can then add it once it's linked from an existing road.

Adding a blank entry

Below each entry (which you can reach as described above) is a button for adding a new dummy just below it.

Deleting an entry

If an entry (which you can reach as described above) is of type dummy, there is a button to delete it.

There are currently problems with this. If it doesn't work, you can try an ordinary edit, adding status="deleted" to the entry. This still may not display correctly, but it should go into the database alright.

Adding a street

To add an entry, you must first edit a link to it in an existing street -- use the link field for this. It should then appear in the list of roads needing to be added (which you may need to re-load to see the new entry), and selecting it from that list will take you into a form for adding it.

Adding and editing graphics

This is currently a streetmaster operation. To add a graphic, you must provide a gif to go in the graphics directory, and (if it's not just for a single entry (which should be done with a picture field anyway)) give it an entry mapping a type, kind or variety of entry, in graphics.attr.

Adding and editing colours

This is currently a streetmaster operation. To specify a colour for an entry or for a type, kind or variety of entry, you must enter it in graphics.attr to give it a colour name, and then map that colour name into the colour spaces we use (currently only the rgbhex format used by some browsers) using colours.attr.

For more information, see the index to the documentation.