discuss: Thread: a year work and work in progress

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?

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.

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

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
> 
>
> 

Quoting Jean-Daniel Dodin ####@####.####

> BUT may be all this is of little importance. Do we still need this
> conversion at all? Do we still nead docbook at all?

Well, in the _ideal_ case, we should have as upstream source format
whatever is the most useful, best structured, most expressive format
that is best-capable of producing various downstream secondary formats.
Docbook (and Linuxdoc) was chosen a long time ago on the basis of being
a serious primary format for publication -- for which good, robust,
scriptable tools exist to generate just about any other format.

But there was a cost:  People had to edit Docbook/Linuxdoc markup (and
then run scripts to generate things like HTML).  I personally never
found that a problem.  Recent thought by many in this space (i.e., on
this mailing list) seems to have firmly arrived at the opposite
conclusion, though.  The current ruling hypothesis seems to be that
making available wiki editing of primary documents solves some of LDP's
key "people problems".

I'm not surprised that the export script (that you described) is poorly
maintained:  The whole notion of Docbook as an _export_ format is a bit
perverse.  So, yeah, dropping it should be considered.

(There may be considerations I'm unaware of, though.)


> I don't even know what is Plucker db. Is this still usefull? How can I
> test if this version works?

Plucker is a popular compressed document format (and open source
application) for PalmOS and WindowsME PDAs.

> plain text and html are easily done from the wiki and firefox can do
> pdf (as we can)

For good or for bad, we're seeing here the natural tendency of projects,
in my experience, that shift everything to Web-based formats (such as
wiki markup) as primary document formats:  Gradually, everything but
HTML and plaintext gets discarded as being (1) difficult and (2)
perceived to no longer matter.   I'm not saying this is necessarily a
bad thing; I'm just saying it happens.

Does it matter whether we can output Plucker?  Honestly, I really doubt
it.  I've used PalmOS PDAs for decades, and sometimes had the entire LDP
collection on them in Plucker format, _but_ I've found few of the HOWTOs
practical to read on such a tiny screen.

Anyway, Plucker documents can be generated from sets of HTML pages.

-- 
Cheers,                      Notice:  The value of your Hofstadter's Constant 
Rick Moen                    (the average amount of time you spend each month 
####@####.####          thinking about Hofstadter's Constant) has just 
McQ!  (4x80)                 been adjusted upwards.

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

Rick Moen a écrit :

> Well, in the _ideal_ case, we should have as upstream source format

yes

> But there was a cost:  People had to edit Docbook/Linuxdoc markup (and
> then run scripts to generate things like HTML).  I personally never
> found that a problem.

I think going to docook was an error. I never had problems with
linuxdoc, but docbook is awfull on a simple text editor and, at that
time, no friendly xml editor was available. Now simply use Kate :-).

For simple edition (fix an URL, for example), it may be simpler to use
docbook than wiki.

But IMHO, the main problem with xml and sgml as well was the backends.
 I don't want to submit a document prior to have seen it in rendered
form, and I always had problems to setup a rendering toolchain on my
computer. Even today, I can't run the ldp tool chain on my own
computer, only on my ibiblio account, an not anybody can do that :-).

> making available wiki editing of primary documents solves some of LDP's
> key "people problems".

Well... obviously the old system was not appealing :-). With the wiki,
we try to make new people to come, keeping the old working system for
anybody wanting it.

> 
> I'm not surprised that the export script (that you described) is poorly
> maintained:  The whole notion of Docbook as an _export_ format is a bit
> perverse.

Why? I don'think docbook was ever seen to be edited in vi. Given this,
MoinMoin is not a good xml editor :-(.

> Plucker is a popular compressed document format (and open source
> application) for PalmOS and WindowsME PDAs.

Popular? I have a windows mobile device and never heard about plucker
(out of LDP) - not a good reading device anyway. I will do a closer look.

> wiki markup) as primary document formats:  Gradually, everything but
> HTML and plaintext gets discarded as being (1) difficult and (2)
> perceived to no longer matter. 

It was originally stated that docbook made necessary a structured
document. I was surprised to see nearly any wiki page can be converted
to docbook, even with bad layout. Html is pretty bad in this respect.

Problem with the wiki is than it's an online system, not good for
lowbandwith.

jdd

Svetoslav Chukov a écrit :
> Actually, we do not need any exporting or converting scripts.

I don'think so

 Let's have a
> look what we miss.

of course

 We need to understand what exactly stops our progress.

I think this is obvious. Ten years ago LDP was nearly the only doc
source. now there are so many others... each author have his own Web site.

 We
> need documents

yes

, and we need a place where to put those documents.

we have this one :-)

 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.

yes, but how can we reach this critical mass? We have approx 70
subscribers to the wiki, but 3/4 writers.

Wiki by itself can't be a sufficient advertisement, but the static
pages are, given the mirrors and the google visibility. But these
pages are old and need updating. to update we need to port them to the
wiki...

We then have to port them back to the static site. question is do we
need to use a static wiki version or port to docbook and use the
toolchain. Probably both.

Anyway, static wiki or docbook conversion, all this is conversion
scripts...

jdd

I think we have to create a marketing project. This marketing project will
have the responsibility to gain the critical mass.

-- 
Svetoslav Chukov



On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 10:42 AM, jdd for http://tldp.org ####@####.####

> Svetoslav Chukov a écrit :
> > Actually, we do not need any exporting or converting scripts.
>
> I don'think so
>
>  Let's have a
> > look what we miss.
>
> of course
>
>  We need to understand what exactly stops our progress.
>
> I think this is obvious. Ten years ago LDP was nearly the only doc
> source. now there are so many others... each author have his own Web site.
>
>  We
> > need documents
>
> yes
>
> , and we need a place where to put those documents.
>
> we have this one :-)
>
>  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.
>
> yes, but how can we reach this critical mass? We have approx 70
> subscribers to the wiki, but 3/4 writers.
>
> Wiki by itself can't be a sufficient advertisement, but the static
> pages are, given the mirrors and the google visibility. But these
> pages are old and need updating. to update we need to port them to the
> wiki...
>
> We then have to port them back to the static site. question is do we
> need to use a static wiki version or port to docbook and use the
> toolchain. Probably both.
>
> Anyway, static wiki or docbook conversion, all this is conversion
> scripts...
>
> jdd
>
> ______________________
> http://lists.tldp.org/
>
>

Svetoslav Chukov a écrit :
> I think we have to create a marketing project. This marketing project will
> have the responsibility to gain the critical mass.
> 
I will say we are all member of the marketting project. Yes we all (5?
6? active members?)

and then?

jdd

At first we have to work with the major distributions to include the LDP's
documents collection.
If you wish, several members of us can share this task. I can handle Fedora
and probably Mandriva. Who can handle openSUSE, Debian?

Then we have to find out which are the outdated documents. We can do this
via a short web survey or a web form on tldp.org and also other web sites of
the major distributions.

-- 
Svetoslav Chukov



On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 11:40 AM, jdd ####@####.#### wrote:

> Svetoslav Chukov a écrit :
> > I think we have to create a marketing project. This marketing project
> will
> > have the responsibility to gain the critical mass.
> >
> I will say we are all member of the marketting project. Yes we all (5?
> 6? active members?)
>
> and then?
>
> jdd
>
>
> ______________________
> http://lists.tldp.org/
>
>

Svetoslav Chukov a écrit :
> At first we have to work with the major distributions to include the LDP's
> documents collection.

we already tried to do, with little luck, but of course we have to do
it again

> If you wish, several members of us can share this task. I can handle Fedora

Once somebody here presented himself as fedora and proposed to work in
that direction. no news since.

> and probably Mandriva.

this should be good. Update the http://wiki.tldp.org/LdpStaff page
accordingly

 Who can handle openSUSE

I'm heavily connected with openSUSE, but the LDP HOWTOs are already in
(and always where)

http://news.opensuse.org/2009/04/13/people-of-opensuse-jean-daniel-dodin/

, Debian?

I think Debian include LDP doc. We plan to include Debian doc in the
LDP static site very soon

> 
> Then we have to find out which are the outdated documents. We can do this
> via a short web survey or a web form on tldp.org and also other web sites of
> the major distributions.

Very simple: all the documents are outdated. Nearly all the non-wiki
documents had no update for at least two years.

look at the (automatically generated) http://tldp.org/sorted_howtos.html

we could probably very easily make it show two years in place of a quarter

jdd