DErik's Test Page Renamed

Under construction/modification by DErik (talk) 18:18, 20 May 2023 (PDT)

Terms and concepts

As with any subject of study, one must first know what things are. Putting labels (names) on them helps provide a frame of reference for them. So here's a short glossary of some terms and names you need to know.

• Ampere: The measure of electrical current through a circuit or component.

• The current (amperage) value on a schematic is usually abbreviated as “amps” or annotated by the letter “A”.
• The letter “I” is used for current in electrical formulas (we like to keep things a little difficult, but it’s etymology can be traced back to some French historical use).

• Current: The flow of electrons or ions through a conductive medium.

One thing that confuses folks is: which way are the electons flowing? Typically, we consider the flow to be from the positive pole of an electrical source to the negative pole. But, to confuse things, the positive pole is actually deficient in electrons (or negatively charged ions), while the negative pole is saturated with them. So in strict physical terms, the flow of elections would be from the negative pole to the positive. Now, since I have probably confused you, ignore the reality of the situation and just consider that a current is simply the flow itself, and in most instances, the direction makes no difference. It is really the difference in electrical potential that is important. Current is measured in amperes and can be calculated by Ohm’s Law as voltage divided by resistance.

${\displaystyle{\displaystyle I={\frac{V}{R}}}}$

• Voltage: The electrical potential difference between two charged elements.

In electronic engineering and research, the volt is defined as one joule per coulomb. But for model railroading, we rarely use joules or coulombs in our parlance, idioms, or vernacular exposition. But the most confusing thing about voltage is its relationship to energy and power. Voltage is measured in volts and can be calculated from Ohm’s Law as current multiplied by resistance.

${\displaystyle{\displaystyle V=I*R}}$

• Energy vs Power:

For our purposes in model railroading, we can generally ignore power and energy concepts, as well as the related concept of work. So you might want to just skip this section. But, for completeness, let me elaborate a little bit.

Energy is the ability to do work, or to provide power. Power is the actual performance of work for a specified period of time; that is, power is the rate of doing work, i.e., using energy. For example, energy is the charge present on a battery, and power is the battery's ability to deliver that charge over time to some circuit components.

Power is often measured in watts. As an example; the power used by a light bulb is measured in watts (not voltage or amperage). The way that power (usually in watts) is determined is based on energy over time. There are various terms (joules, ergs, newtons) used to express and calculate watts, but, for our usage in model railroading, it is basically just voltage times amperage (specifically, one watt is one volt times one ampere). So watts are really not relevant until a circuit is complete, since no power is being consumed from a battery until that circuit is closed.

Kilowatt-hours are what you might see on your electric bill, as that is what the power companies use as billing metric. As you might suspect from the term, a watt-hour is the power provided by a one watt source or used by a device during one hour. Energy is calculated as the power supplied for a specified duration of time, hence kilowatt-hour is power in watts multiplied by time in hours.

While batteries are often labeled by the voltage they possess, you may often see amp-hours or milliamp-hours on batteries. This is a way or expressing how long the charge of the battery will last. The charge itself really isn’t important, but it is used to determine the energy available in the battery and the power it can deliver. For example, a battery with an amp-hour rating of The relationship between watts and amp-hours is based on the voltage. Watts can be computed from amp-hours by multiplying the amp-hours by the voltage. For example, a 9 volt battery having a rating of 625 milliamp-hours will have 5.625 watts available; so it could be used to power something that takes no more than 5.625 watts. And this will obviously decrease as the battery is used.

• Resistance:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistance_and_conductance

The

These units are probably enough to allow you to analyze and work with most of the electronic components and circuits present in a model railroad layout.

References

• Something else here

Done with basic electronics testing

This is a test page, where I experiment with various things. Additional pages exist as well. See the DErik's TOC Xprmnts page. It describes various test I made incorporating text, headers, and a TOC to see how the popup preview (when you pause the cursor over an article link, like the one here) is displayed. Results indicate that some straight text (like the synopsis of the article) should be before any header or TOC request. Other things, like including the article in a category, or putting some HTML (particularly comments) first is also OK. For example, I have both a category specification and HTML comments in front of this paragraph. Which is then followed by a header. I have not specifically requested a TOC, but one will be generated automatically because I have more than 3 headings (at various levels).

a heading

this line is centered and all by itself, using HTML "center" tag And so is this line image, again using HTML "center" tag. Followed by an image that gets centered as well. Believe that is because I added a "center" attribute to the declaration of the image file, like so: [[File:Receiver_control_chip.jpeg|center|200px|Receiver control chip]]

Receiver control chip

But notice that the caption text is not included with the above image. To have a caption, the image must be declared as a thumbnail. Check this out:[[File:Receiver_control_chip.jpeg|thumb|200px|Receiver control chip]]

Receiver control chip

I declared the image right after the example declaration, and then I forced a line break (used HTML "br" tag) after the image above, but still in the "center" tag. However, note that the thumbnail image is right justified, with text wrapped to its left. The next thumbnail below is centered because I included the "center" attribute in the declaration of the image file.

Receiver board

But notice that, if your browser page is wide enough, it isn't exactly centered. It is still to the left of the previous thumbnail. But it is centered in the space available to the left of the previous thumbnail. Shrink the width of the window to see how it behaves.
The "controller" thumb is left justified.

The controller

The following thumb is sized at 200px.

Dr. Bunza built this.

And here ends the HTML "center" tag.

Here's a level 3 header

But then I start a new center tag section.

This is a test page for DErik.

---

This text is wrapped in a <span> tag with a CSS style attribute included. The CSS style of "text-align: center;" apparently is not recognized or is ignored or deleted by the wiki software.

The actual full text of the above paragraph is shown below, wrapped in a <nowiki> tag so that you can see all of it. However, the left and right arrow characters around "span" above are done with normal HTML escapes, that is wrapped in an "&" and ";" so that they will appear as the proper characters and not be recognized as arrow indicators.

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: green; text-align: center;">This text is wrapped in a &lt;span&gt; tag with a CSS style attribute included. The CSS style of "text-align: center;" apparently is not recognized or is ignored or deleted by the wiki software.</span>

References and Footnotes

Inserting a reference: . And then listing them, at least the ones defined so far.

Trying it in WYSIWG editor: <ref>Really does not work</ref> because it wraps in nowiki tag.

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A live reference example: with the list here:

Note the numbering started over. This is because the reference list was already done above.

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Images

See Help:Images for details.

---

Template:Dir|thumb|320px| <translate> Photo of participants of the Wikimedia Hackathon 2019</translate>

[File:Wikimedia Hackathon Prague 2019 - Group Photo - CLK - cropped.jpg|thumb|320px]
[1]

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A file reference included here: [[File:5387.jpg|thumb|100x100px|Some caption here]]

Some caption here

That is to a JPG and shown as a thumbnail photo. It appears that it will be placed by default to the far right of the text body, with any following text wrapped around it. This seems to be because it is a "thumbnail" or a floating. But you can change the left right position using a floating attribute. For example, the following picture

Some caption here

is in a <span style="float:left; margin:5px;">pic</span>.

And you are able to modify the position of a picture with regard to the text even when it is not a thumb or floating picture. But in those cases, it seems that horizontal and vertical positioning do not interact well with each other. For example, to center the pic and have the bottom of the pic even with the bottom of the text does not seem possible, while doing either one independtly works fine. See Help:Images

A reference to the image file directly: Opens in a separate tab or window with the file information included

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The "No wiki formatting" button in the toolbar above wraps selected text in the <nowiki></nowiki> tag. This results in the included text not being recognized as wiki commands. And I think not as HTML in some cases either. Still experimenting with that.

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Category stuff

My testing

MRT SIG

Manuals

MRT Meeting Minutes

MRT Topics

Pending Review

Works In Progress

MOD SIG

MRT SIG Topics

Remote Control and DCC

Sample Article Structure

Vendor Index

Wiki Usage and Editing

3D Printing

3D Print Server how-to

MRT Meeting Minutes‎ (3 P)

03-25-23 MRT-SIG meeting minutes

29 Apr, 2023 Minutes

SIG meeting minutes index

Category RCGRS Wiki Help not found

Others

The following is copied from source of page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Contents.

---

{{pp-protected|reason=Persistent [[WP:Disruptive editing|disruptive editing]]: new accounts don't need to edit this|small=yes|category=no}}
{{Container category|nocat=true}}
{{Wikipedia category|shortcut1=CAT:|shortcut2=CAT:CONT|shortcut3=CAT:CONTENTS}}
{{For|an overview of the content of Wikipedia|Wikipedia:Contents}}
{{See also|Category:Wikipedia pageviews|Category:Wikipedia navigation|Category:Wikipedia administration}}

This is the '''top level''' of [[Wikipedia:About|Wikipedia]]'s [[Wikipedia:Categorization|category system]] (which is why it has no parent category). Its subcategories contain various types of encyclopaedic content (i.e. [[:Category:Articles|articles]]), content that assists with the navigation of the encyclopaedia (e.g. [[:Category:Portals|portals]]), as well as pages related to maintaining and collaborating on the encyclopaedia (e.g. [[Wikipedia:Administration|Wikipedia administration]] and [[Wikipedia:WikiProjects|WikiProjects]]).

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Which results in the following:

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Template:Pp-protected
Template:Container category
Template:Wikipedia category
Template:For
Template:See also

This is the top level of Wikipedia's category system (which is why it has no parent category). Its subcategories contain various types of encyclopaedic content (i.e. articles), content that assists with the navigation of the encyclopaedia (e.g. portals), as well as pages related to maintaining and collaborating on the encyclopaedia (e.g. Wikipedia administration and WikiProjects).

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Note that the "Template:..." lines, and a couple of other referencees, are red, indicating that the referenced pages do not yet exist. That is because this is the RCGRS wiki site. They do exist on the Wikipedia site, but not here. To see the actual Wikipedia page, and view its actual source from there, click the link at the begining of this section. Also, note the syntax of the references in the source; it is done with transclusion, so the actual page as displayed appears a little differently than just the source text would imply.

Section headings with anchor

<div id="Unique anchor name 1">optional text</div>

<span id="Unique anchor name 2">optional text</span>

Rendered block-level and inline, respectively. Doing this would allow for [[#Unique anchor name 1]] on the same page or [[Help:Links#Unique anchor name 1]] on a different page. Omit the "optional text" for an invisible anchor.

Setting an anchor in a section heading

==<span id="Alternate Section Title 1">Some anchor name here?</span>Section heading goes here==

Note the placement. This must be a "span" tag, not a "div". (Such anchors allow sections to be retitled without breaking incoming links.) DErik note: When you edit this page, you will see that the text line starts with a blank character. Deleting that blank character results in the following:

==<span id="Alternate Section Title 1">Some anchor name here?</span>Section heading goes here==

Also note that, in both examples above, everything between the double equals sign pairs, that are the wiki markup for a section, is also wrapped in a "nowiki" tag section - that you cannot see without editing this page.

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Creating a table with special formatting

Tables

See Help:Tables help page.

Math equations

From the Wikipedia Help:Displaying a formula page:
For example, the famous Einstein formula can be entered in raw HTML as {{nowrap|''E'' {{=}} ''mc''²}}, which is rendered as Template:Nowrap (the template {{nowrap}} is here only for avoiding a line break inside the formula). With {{math}}, it can be entered as {{math|''E'' {{=}} ''mc''{{sup|2}}}}, which is rendered as E = mc² . With LaTeX, it is entered as <math>E=mc^2</math>, and rendered as ${\displaystyle{\displaystyle E=mc^{2}}}$.
(LaTeX is the current default in this version of MediaWiki.)

See the MediaWIki Help:Displaying a formula for details on rendering math equations here. Here are some examples:

''E'' = ''mc''{{sup|2}} --> E = mc²
''E'' = ''mc''² --> E = mc²
<math>E = mc^2</math> --> ${\displaystyle{\displaystyle E=mc^{2}}}$ Note that Bold is not rendered, but this can be changed so it is rendered in bold, or plain text (no italic)
{{math|1=''E'' = ''mc''{{sup|2}}}} --> E = mc²

${\displaystyle{\displaystyle V=R*I}}$,    ${\displaystyle{\displaystyle R=V/I}}$ or ${\displaystyle{\displaystyle R={\frac{V}{I}}}}$,     ${\displaystyle{\displaystyle I={\frac{V}{R}}}}$ or ${\displaystyle{\displaystyle I=V\div R}}$