Modifying Knot Pages

Knot pages on The Knot Atlas can be modified in three ways:

• Beginner. Only the knot page being viewed is modified, and only in certain specific places.
• Intermediate. These are modifications that effect the way all knot pages (or sometimes just all knot pages of a given class) are displayed, but no new "per knot" data is introduced.
• Expert. Introduces new invariants, pictures or data on all knot pages.

Beginner Mode Editing: Using Existing Hooks

On every knot page there are a number of "named editing hooks"; links bearing names such as Edit 5_1 Further Notes and Views, which contain the explicit name of the knot being studied. Clicking on a named editing hook allows you to edit (wiki-style) the section that follows it on the knot page. Just for fun, put your name in the obvious place (down at the bottom) using Edit 5_1 Further Notes and Views and see how it affects the knot page 5_1.

Intermediate Mode Editing: Modifying Templates

In MediaWiki talk, each knot page conatains just one element: a template call with many parameters (the values of the various "invariants" of that knot, including names of image files, etc.). That templates renders a knot page with the given values for its invariants. So the appearance of knot pages, including the addition/modification/removal of the named editing hooks of the beginners section, can be controled by modifying this "master" template. At the moment there are four knot tables on the Knot Atlas, and hence four master templates. These are: Template:Rolfsen Knot Page, Template:Hoste-Thistlethwaite Knot Page, Template:Link Page and Template:Torus Knot Page. Each such master template contains a link to itself somewhere near its bottom, and the result is that every knot page contains somewhere near its bottom a link to the template that renders it. Find it on 5_1!

Each master template in itself calls a number of "slave" templates which render smaller parts of knot pages. Some of these slave templates, and some subsections of the master templates, can be reached directly from from the knot pages with certain "unnamed editing hooks". (Find them on 5_1).

Warning: Some slave templates are shared between several masters. So editing Template:Khovanov Homology, for example, will change the way Khovanov Homology is displayed on several types of knot pages.

Expert Mode Editing: Splicing and Data Uploading

At the moment there are two Knot Atlas experts and they do "bulk editing" (adding invariants or pictures to all knots at the same time) in two different ways (though each is/would be happy to use the other's way when appropriate).