discuss: Lampadas update and planning (LONG)
Subject:
Lampadas update and planning (LONG)
From:
David Merrill ####@####.####
Date:
15 Jul 2002 13:41:54 -0000
Message-Id: <20020715143244.GA9351@lupercalia.net>
Things are still proceeding very well with Lampadas development. In
fact, I am rather surprised at how well system integration has been
going. I handle all the meta-data the LDPDB did, and more. I can
convert every single file format on my feature list into clean DocBook
XML and thence into HTML, although individual docs are still giving me
problems due to catalog issues and the like (I think -- still
debugging). And I can import LDPDB data directly from the LDPDB.
There are three different websites where you can see Lampadas in
action:
The demo site - http://demo.lampadas.org
My test server - http://test.lampadas.org
The static demo - http://static.lampadas.org
If you ever try the demo and it's broken, wait ten minutes. I'm
probably just updating it. The code really is quite stable now.
All LDP authors have accounts on the demo system. Usually your
username is your fullname, lowercased, no spaces or periods. Or you
can request your password via a link on the home page. If you have an
actual account on the LDPDB, your username is carried over but not
your password. There's more about it on the Lampadas home page.
The demo server is usually up and stable, so that's where you want to
be, most likely. However, the test server (which is really my
workstation) has the latest and greatest -- and therefore sometimes
broken -- code.
The static site is a new one. I just got it up last night. It displays
what the "static" version of the Lampadas site looks like. You will
notice the names of the filenames are home.de.html and the like --
this is so they can be served by Apache's content negotiation module,
based on language preferences. For now, just click the language of
your choice on the index.html page and you should be put into the
right translation.
So that's the status. I handle all the meta-data, I render all the
documents, and I generate static HTML. There's a simple CMS included,
enough to manage the LDP website. There are some bugs and other issues,
but they are all succumbing to analysis, so I will definitely be in a
beta state end-of-month. After a month of testing and polishing, it
will be ready for production use and I'll release it as 1.0 when it is
ready.
Now for what I want to do in the next few weeks or so...
I would like to work with Ferg, Joy, and the others who are involved
in the LDPDB or in website and document production, to identify what
exactly remains to be done before Lampadas could replace the LDPDB and
become the platform which we use to generate the LDP website.
I am *NOT* ready yet to base the LDP website on dynamic pages! I have
some performance problems to fix, and then optimizing to do before I'd
even consider that. It's months away. But performance is fine for the
LDP Staff to use, roughly equivalent to the LDPDB.
Last we spoke, Ferg was interested in adopting Lampadas at some level,
but obviously this was not a commitment, and he'll (and you'll) want
to take a hard look at it now, and point out the shortcomings which
are still there, and things I've overlooked.
I would also very much like to get the website translated into some
additional languages. We have English, German and French right now. We
should at least try to have the five "International TLDP" languages
supported on the first release. Is anybody willing to do some
translating?
Finally, I want to get some serious testing with live documents from
some other TLDP languages besides English. Are any of the
formerly-translation-projects-but-now-all-TLDP groups at the point
where they are ready to start putting their docs into our CVS? If not,
would any of you send me some URLs to the sources of some of your
documents? I only read English and a smattering of French and Spanish,
so it's hard to locate them on your webpages.
--
David C. Merrill http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project ####@####.####
Lead Developer http://www.tldp.org
No major software project that has been successful in a general
marketplace (as opposed to niches) has ever gone through those nice
lifecycles they tell you about in CompSci classes.
-- Linus Torvalds, Linux Kernel Mailing List
