Object Info Window (Wiki) - Editing, saving, distribution with addons

A guide explaining briefly how to edit names and info on real or fictional objects in SpaceEngine by using the in-game "Wiki" window

Info window - Introduction

When you select an object in SpaceEngine, you can see some data about it on the top-left corner of the screen. That's only a partial list of data processed by the program. The entire list is available by opening the wiki info database (I).
Information is categorized in several tabs: Info, General, Physical, Climate, Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Orbit. Some of them could be disabled depending on the class of the selected object.
You can read a description for some well known objects of the Solar System in the Info tab, like for Earth. Descriptions are localized in the chosen language for the GUI, and they have been provided by users in their native tongue, usually the content can differ from language to language.

Edit, Import, Export

Clicking the "Edit" button allows you to add or change content in the Info tab, for example you can add a name to a procedural star or a planet you like and a story for it.
Your content will be saved in different files, depending on what you select in the wiki edit window.

• If the object is not procedural, like an exoplanet loaded from a default catalog, it will have "Real object" checkbox flagged. In this case, the content will be saved in the local database for the currently selected GUI language, in the SpaceEngine /data/locale/<LOC>-db.cfg file, where <LOC> matches with the GUI localization.
  
• If the "Real object" checkbox is not flagged, content will go in a local "personal" database, /config/user-<LOC>-db.cfg file.

In wiki edit mode you can enter additional fields:

• Object from franchise - if you are going to add a planet from the fictional universe of a book or a movie, you can specify it here
  
• Pioneer name , Discovery date - in case of real objects, usually it contains the name of the discoverer.

Wiki info interface, editing session. The GUI being in english, it will be saved in a user-eng-db.cfg file.

Wiki entries for mods

When you create specific descriptions for a planet or a star system that you want to share with others, you can place a renamed copy of your customized user-<LOC>-db.cfg wiki file in a /locale folder alongside other folders /catalogs, /textures etc. and distribute the mod. You can share localized copies of your wiki file for people using a localized GUI, making your mod description enjoyable in several languages, or you can help other modders by translating their mod descriptions in your native language.

Importing and exporting

Exporting your wiki entries is important to not waste all the time you dedicated to it.
The "Export" button will let you choose what you want to export:

• Only this object
  
• Only my discoveries
  
• All real objects
  
• All procedural objects

A db.cfg file in the /export folder will be created.

The "Import" button allows you to recover your wiki entries from an exported database if an update for the program forces a new version of wiki database files:

• Only my discoveries
  
• All real objects
  
• All procedural objects
  
• Overwrite duplicates

When "Overwrite duplicates" is not selected, new descriptions for already existing entries will be ignored.
If you previously added a name and description for a procedural object that doesn't exist anymore after a SpaceEngine update, such description will still be in the database file, but ignored by the program.

Available BBCodes for the database

Object descriptions in the wiki info database (I) can make use of special BBCodes which allow the input of some special symbols and allow the modification of the appearance of the text. A list of codes is contained below.

Note: codes are not case-sensitive.

Text modification codes



Symbol codes