Talk:Prusa i3 Buyers Guide

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I just added prices to this page, but then noticed under history that the last edit was "No prices, please". I don't want to step on any toes, but to me pricing seems like an important part of a "buyers guide". Thoughts?

Bad idea, unless you guarantee me to check all prices every week for the next two years. Prices change very often and vendors rarely care to adjust them here in the wiki. Also, a bare price says nothing about the value, as the completeness of kits differ. High quality kits tend to be more expensive than basic ones. --Traumflug 09:24, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. Maybe out of date prices are still better than none. Perhaps an "As of" tag would be appropriate.
The ideal solution would be for this to update automatically. The Wikipedia market indices page is updated by an approved bot. The bot takes the values off of the yahoo finances page each day. Perhaps I could get the source code for the bot, and modify it to keep the prices here up to date. Anyone have any thoughts? --Macon 21:27, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
By the way, this is the bot I'm talking about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DinojermBot --Macon 21:34, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
I think the best idea is to simply stop looking at solely the price. If you promote the price as the only relevant argument for a buying decision, you also promote low quality. Because then sellers have to make their kits lean, have to fool buyers with marketing tricks and have to stop development. If a RepRapper in spe can't click through a number of links to find the best offer for her, we can't help anyways. --Traumflug 10:23, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Vertical Text

Nice addition, this table. Perhaps there's no need for an electronics and an extruder section, because there are no i3-specific electronics or extruders. An i3 can be controlled by any electronics, right?

Regarding vertical text, here are two screenshots. One from this page (top), one from RepRap Buyers' Guide (bottom). As you can see, the graphics version doesn't exactly look better. Because graphics don't recognize fonts, background colors, etc., so it fits only for one specific browser/OS combo.

Vertical Text-Graphics.png
Vertical Text.png

--Traumflug 09:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. :)
I could go either way with the electronics and extruder sections. There aren't i3 specific electronics, but someone new to RepRap might still want the info.
The reason I did the vertical text as images is that this is how Internet Explorer 8 displays the RepRap Buyer's Guide table:
Vertical Text IE8.png
Chrome displays correctly, but I will try to remember to try FireFox and maybe Safari too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Table#Vertically_oriented_column_headers recommends using an image (preferably .svg) to solve this problem.
I aligned the images to the bottom, and that improved the look slightly. I'll try to update the images from .png's with grey backgrounds to .svg files with transparent backgrounds. I'm not sure why there is such a large gap between each image and the sort button. --Macon 14:34, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
True. Support in older browsers is the weak spot of rotated text. Also that you have to override column width, because column width is calculated before rotation, not after. That's why the {{Vertical}} template requires a size. Ideally, the latter is solved in an updated wiki software. I have hope we get that within the next few weeks.
On my part, I'd keep what we currently have until then. If the measuring bug is solved, rotated text should render fine in browsers supporting it, older browsers should widen the column to display it horizontally.
An additional point: PNGs feature transparency, too.
Regarding electronics, I'd simply describe the required features (4 stepper drivers, 1 extruder heater, optionally 1 heated bed, optionally more extruders) in the printer description (outside this guide).
--Traumflug 11:16, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

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