discuss: a year work and work in progress
Subject:
Re: [discuss] a year work and work in progress
From:
walter harms ####@####.####
Date:
18 May 2009 17:59:04 +0100
Message-Id: <4A11928A.8080206@bfs.de>
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
>
>
>
