Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 20:15:17 -0800 (PST) From: Mike s <god@yahoo.com> To: stable@freebsd.org Cc: freebsd-docs@freebsd.org Subject: re:freebsd.org Message-ID: <19991228041517.23423.qmail@web506.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Mon, 27 Dec 1999, Nik Clayton wrote: > Mike, > > On Sun, Dec 26, 1999 at 04:40:05PM -0800, Mike s >wrote: > > Well, i have already taking the iniative in >starting > > what it is i have been talking about. > > That's great. It gives people a chance to see what >you have in mind. > Actions speak a lot louder than words. I will have something to show within the next few weeks, i have something up already but i want to finish a bit more. > > > I have a lot of documentation that is done already, ( > > alot being 35% ) > > the site is very appealing for those that use netscape > > and the like and is also > > lynx friendly. > > Also good. I'd be interested in you collaborating >with the rest of > the doc team to try and get this in to the 'mainstream' site as well. well the freebsd.org site is not what i want to replace. I would be willing to contribute to it as well. maybe another part of the site ( e.g. newbies.freebsd.org ) > > I have already coded alot of user/interactive parts >of > > the site in php. > > This is (sort of) the problem. > > PHP (or Zope, or Zend, or lots complicated CGI >scripts) are great when > you only have one site. And one language. And only a few people working > on it. like i said earlier, planting he seed is what counts. I'm sure others that are fluent in foreign languages that i am not would eventually make the conversion. I would hope. > > As soon as you start using something less mainstream, you start to reduce > the number of people who can work on it, and, more importantly, you increase > the effort required to mirror it (and, quite possibly, to translate it). the different languages would be a problem being that i only speak English however, mirroring the site will not be difficult if it was or was not incorporated with freebsd.org, i have mirrored the php.net site awhile back when i first started to learn php and the way they had set it up was rather simple using rsync to mirror the site and a cron job to keep the mirror's up to date. however, there were a few bugs that would need some sort of work around. so in short i agree with you. There are pro's and con's in the way php.net mirrors their site. > > If you look at the FreeBSD site as it is at the moment, you'll see it's > mirrored in sixty countries, and translated in to five languages. I never said i wanted to replace freebsd.org. I have consistantly said it would be a seperate entity entirely. Now you guys are opening my mind up to a much larger project then i had in mind. Which was initially not my intentions. > > That's possible because the site's infrastructure is relatively basic. > The mirrors don't need to worry about setting up a complex webserver, > all they need is basic CGI functionality, and the translation teams just > need to be familiar with HTML, there's nothing extra they need to learn. > This keeps the effort requirement down, and increases the chance that > people will participate. Documentation for mirroring the freebsd.org site is lacking majorily. i attempted to do it once and was unsuccesful. > > Looking at your list of proposed content; > > > before launching the alpha site it will include: > > > > -a step by step installation process focused on the > > novice. > > -troubleshooting > > -basic networking support > > -getting Connected to the internet > > -all man pages marked outdated/up to date > > -using CVSup and make world > > -security related support > > -what services need to be running for specific server > > purposes > > -performance optimization > > -understanding log files > > -understanding /etc/*.conf files for the novice > > -most common asked questions with simple solutions ( > > Not FAQ's ) > > -FreeBSD command reference. > > -UID's and GID's file permissions > > -introduction to firewalls. > > -mailing list archives which users will be able to > > send and recieve via the web > > With the exception of the mailing list archives, there's nothing there > that can't be done with the FreeBSD site as it is, and; again, the documentation on Freebsd.org is not very simple to navigate around or understand for the novice/newbie. that is what i want to focus on ( the newbie ), rather than an overwheming description with alot of info that newbies would only be able to understand 10% if even. It would be easier im my opinion to redo the whole site then it would to pick through what is outdated and what is not. > > > the beauty of the site is that user can submit > > comments to the documentation > > also add documentation to the subject in mind that > > will be pre-formatted > > to the site once submitted and at the bottom of the > > page will be links to all > > the comments and additional documentation. > > That's a nice idea. I'd be interested in something like this for the > FreeBSD site that automatically included a link to the outstanding PRs > for a piece of documentation. This part i have almost fully completed the code for. Making it work with freebsd.org would need a lot of tweaking. > However, your approach won't scale to new languages, or to mirror sites, > without a lot of effort, and it's issues like these that we have to > consider for the main FreeBSD site. > > Also, consider how the user will be able to get their documentation. Will > it only be available from your site? A lot of people have dial up > connections, and won't want to recheck a new site each week on the off > chance that some comments have been added to a document. well the code already has an option that would email a notification of new comments to users that have submitted comments to the documentation at hand, along with a newsletter with updates to the site ( which is undetermined how often it will be sent ). > How will they be > able to keep local copies of your documentation? Will they be able to > download Postscript or PDF versions for pretty printing. like i said this would be alpha, these things would fit more into the beta release. I have pondered this already and have ideas on how to implement this. but nothing set in stone thus far. > Or even suitable > for installing in to a Palm Pilot[1]. Palm pilots, well quite honestly i have never owned one and do not know how they work. > > I'm not trying to be negative -- I deeply appreciate that you want to help, > and that you're prepared to put the time in to doing some work on what you > see as being problems. > I think it is time for me to write another email to recapitulate everythng that has been discussed and also clearify some key points of interest both on my part and what others have suggested to me. Which i will do tomorrow sometime. mike god@yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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