discuss: a year work and work in progress
Subject:
Re: [discuss] a year work and work in progress
From:
Svetoslav Chukov ####@####.####
Date:
19 May 2009 08:24:29 +0100
Message-Id: <e29b0db60905190019t20493f4nca5058063445325d@mail.gmail.com>
Actually, we do not need any exporting or converting scripts. Let's have a
look what we miss. We need to understand what exactly stops our progress. We
need documents, and we need a place where to put those documents. Additional
work, as converting and exporting, is just extra overhead for us, so we need
just to build community and gain a critical mass. The critical mass is
crucial for TLDP and any other OSS project. So, the wiki is completely
useless without the community and the last year is proof for that.
--
Svetoslav Chukov
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 7:53 PM, walter harms ####@####.#### wrote:
>
>
> jdd for http://tldp.org schrieb:
> > Hello :-)
> >
> > I'm not very fond of anniversaries, but I still want to remember than
> > approximately a year ago a discussion started here that, in fine, gave
> > a new kick off to the LDP.
> >
> > So may be it's time for some kind of summary of the work done and the
> > work still to be done.
> >
> > What was done and is working is the setup of the wiki, the refreshing
> > of the mirror list, the scan of the existing HOWTOs looking for the
> > licence (not to speak of a new hardware for the servers, fairly
> > administrated by Ser, and good relations with ibiblio folks).
> >
> > What is in the way but not working as expected is the translation from
> > HOWTOs to wiki and more challenging from wiki to docbook.
> >
> > Porting a HOWTO to the wiki still need some manual work. The script
> > don't work completely well, and still work only from html. This page
> > http://wiki.tldp.org/Converting-a-HOWTO gives most of the info.
> >
> > This problem, however, is not very important because this have to be
> > done only once (for a given HOWTO) and so is manageable. main problem
> > are URL and table management. the script (htmltodocbook) is available
> > and any help is welcome.A year ago it was said that we could convert
> > all the HOWTO at once, it could be now a good idea to do so is anybody
> > knows how :-).
> >
> > The other side conversion, from the wiki to docbook is much more
> > important because it have to be done each time a HOWTO is updated and
> > sometime it's often. So the manual steps I have to do are too many.
> >
> > http://wiki.tldp.org/Exporting_to_docbook summaries the problems. On
> > my opinion, there is nothing really difficult, but the news are bad:
> > the script author do *not* anymore maintain it and a new MoinMoin wiki
> > is to be released that will unvalidate the present script.
> >
> > I my personal opinion, a console script able to convert the raw Moin
> > page to docbook should be better than the present online system if
> > possible. The script should be simpler and could be run
> > non-interactively in the ldp system. Now it's python. Python
> > programmer needed.
> >
> > BUT may be all this is of little importance. Do we still need this
> > conversion at all? Do we still nead docbook at all?
> >
> > Of course the docbook toolchain will be kept as long as there are
> > docbook subscriptions, but do we need to keep docbook source for all
> > the HOWTOs?
> >
> > Right now and from the beginning, the LDP offers HOWTOs in several
> > formats:
> >
> > * html (one page and several pages)
> > * pdf
> > * plain text
> > * plucker db
> > * source
> >
> > I don't even know what is Plucker db. Is this still usefull? How can I
> > test if this version works?
>
>
> http://www.plkr.org/
>
> > plain text and html are easily done from the wiki and firefox can do
> > pdf (as we can)
> >
> > Tere is a project, quite in good shape, to insert in the Static
> > (mirrorred) LDP site a static version of the wiki.
> >
> > Could it be possible to simply link the relevant HOWTOs to this static
> > site and drop nthe docbook conversion (unless the conversion is one
> > time and asked by the maintainer)?
> >
> > What is not as well done as I wouldlike is the LDP advertisement. We
> > lack too much authors and volunteers. We have may be one wiki
> > subscription a week :-(
> >
> > http://wiki.tldp.org/FrontPage?action=info&hitcounts=1 shows that the
> > wiki home page is hit 50 times a day, slowly encreasing but fairly low.
> >
>
> the hard thing is always to get a critical mass ...
>
>
> > We have a volunteer to revamp the LDP Home page, what should be a good
> > idea...
> >
> > We have also yet to port to the wiki a lot of the old site that should
> > be better there, but these pages are difficult to copy...
> >
> > In fine, I hoped to have all the old HOWTOs reviewed for the end of
> > 2009, it'not to be done if we don't do something.
> >
> > Sincerely
> > jdd
> >
> >
> >
>
> ______________________
> http://lists.tldp.org/
>
>
--
Svetoslav Chukov
