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  • From: seth AT swoolley.homeip.net
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] CMS talks (was Re: website)
  • Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2006 00:46:23 -0700

On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 09:32:45AM -0700, Andrew Stitt wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 10:49:46AM -0500, Jeremy Blosser wrote:
> >
> > The information wouldn't be different. The point is we don't have a lot
> > of
> > people resources or time, and it's really frustrating that whenever this
> > conversation comes up everyone just focuses on arguing a case for
> > $FAVORITE_CMS instead of spending the time writing some docs.
> >
> > The primary problem with the existing site/software is a lack of content.
> > If we can't fix that there's no point spending the significant time that
> > would be involved in switching to something else. This would be like
> > doing
> > the VCS eval if we didn't have source code to put into it.
> >
> > Some argue we need to switch to make it easier for people to write docs,
> > and while that may have some merit, we've done it at least twice and it
> > hasn't really made a difference. Which is why I say: whoever writes the
> > docs can pick the frontend/CMS after they're done.
>
> I think you hit the nail right on head. Trying to evaluate a cms without
> any content is silly.
>
> Content first, presentation later.
>
> Put another way, we're not going to magically get content by picking
> another cms or wiki so the "docs team" will feel more motivated.
> The reward for writing docs will be a nice website framework to
> present them in.
>
> The RDP team's purpose is to create content. We will create it with or
> without a wiki/cms/whatever. I dont see that as a roadblock in any way
> aside from requiring read-access to salvage existing content.
>
> We can use plaintext with some basic wiki syntax if we need to (there
> are some standalone wikis we can use to test syntax). I think everyone
> has their favorite text editor and is comfortable writing in that. That
> should appeal to everyone sense of motivation, no more silly text box
> on a website to type into. You get a *real* editor.
>
> For what its worth, every single document I've written since becoming a
> linux user (I started late, I'm going on 6 years now) was first written in
> vi (or emacs before I switched), and then formatted with a word processor,
> presentation tool, LaTeX, wiki, or whatever later.
>
> So, who else is with me on creating that content?

I think the only piece of documentation outside of some process I wrote
was the first install guide that went on the iso in plain text and was
committed to the SCM directly.

Oh, I did document the libunpack interfaces quite extensively, but that
was in the code, bashdoc style, again in the SCM.

I'll work on this team. In fact, I'll do the formatting for whomever
that doesn't want to format anything. I'm also a bit of a grammar nut.
I was editor of my high school yearbook, so I know a little bit about
publishing.

I'm willing to go through old documentation and clean it up and convert
it to new formats too.

I write terrible docs, I think (always leaving out steps that I assume
everybody knows how to do), so I'm not sure how much of a help I'll be
writing documentation, but I can at least edit/organize it.

Seth




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