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Re: [brlcad-devel] BRL-CAD participation
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From: Matthew A. <sol...@gm...> - 2010-02-19 13:10:12
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Excellent, I do like to see a meritocratic approach. It sounds like it works well here, too. I think I can see ways for the round-trip interface to work. My initial reaction is bi-directional parsing, to rebuild the formatting of any change so that it can be slotted in/over as appropriately at the other end. Obviously I'll have to look at how it's working, though. Sounds like a fun project actually. On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 10:23 PM, Christopher Sean Morrison <br...@ma...>wrote: > > Matthew, > > All of BRL-CAD development, including the website, is developed under a > meritocracy. Basically we all work on various things that are of interest > and come to consensus agreement unless there is a specific issue requiring > intervention. Those who constructively contribute, frequently interact, and > remain highly involved have more say than those who do not. This generally > empowers contributors to work towards the best interests of the project > unhindered as long as they're persistently and openly communicating with > others WHILE they work (not just when they're "done" with something). > > So, to answer your question, everyone who has contributed more than you is > "in charge" but things don't work that way in practice. If someone steps up > to work on a project, nobody is generally going to stop them unless the > project is outside of scope, affects usability, will be a maintenance > burden, or changes a public interface. > > Working on a round-trip documentation interface is something that we've > been working towards for several years, but the goal is a bit tricky. We > want the power of revision-controlled documents checked into a repository > with the accessibility of a wiki, and the ability to edit on either end. > > Getting our documentation into a structured format -- Doxbook/XML -- has > provided tracking, integration, and validation of our documentation with > easy export to a variety of formats. Several contributors have been working > on converting our existing documentation (which is in a myriad of formats). > This has been going great for some ... but writing XML, getting access and > committing to an SVN repository, and setting up an XML toolchain is not > exactly what I'd call "accessible". > > The idea is to provide some mechanism that allows our documentation to get > published/presented to the web, but in an editable format. As our web > infrastructure is built on Mediawiki and Drupal, the natural direction > becomes a plugin in either one of those systems. The hard part is then how > to manage "editing fragments" that compose various larger works and the > conversion to/from Docbook if an alternate format is presented (e.g., > wikitext markup). > > Even if the web-editing user were presented with the raw Docbook/XML > (instead of wikitext) but could then see validation errors and/or see their > result rendered on-line, we would have a very useful round-trip online > editing capability. Developers would be able to edit the Docbook directly > in the repository and push changes to the website. External web users would > be able to see our documentation, make minor edits quickly (even > anonymously), and have those changes persist to the repository. > > Cheers! > Sean > > > > On Feb 18, 2010, at 9:33 AM, Matthew Ayres wrote: > > Sean, all > > Glad to be here, then! I'd be more than happy to do some work on the > website, though I'd like to know who is in charge of it, of course. > > The round-trip documentation interface does sound interesting. More detail > would certainly be welcome. > > -Matthew > > On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 6:00 AM, Sean Morrison < > br...@us...> wrote: > >> >> Message body follows: >> >> Matthew, >> >> With a system as large and complex as BRL-CAD, there are ways just >> about anyone can contribute in very effective ways. That said, you >> seemingly understate your capacity to do something useful from the >> look of the skills you list. >> >> I'd recommend getting started on something that leverages your >> current skills, as there will be plenty about BRL-CAD that will take >> a while to get familiarized with no matter what you work on. From >> what you list, this is perhaps something related to website >> development. >> >> Our website has much room for improvement, obviously, so there is >> plenty you can work on from basic aesthetic redesign to a specific >> programming project. One programming project that comes to mind >> that >> would have a big impact is working on a round-trip documentation >> interface. If that sounds interesting, I can go into more detail. >> That said, there are plenty of other ideas that come to mind as well. >> >> Feel free to join the brlcad-devel developer's mailing list and/or >> our IRC channel. >> >> Cheers! >> Sean >> >> cc brlcad-devel >> >> -- >> This message has been sent to you, a registered SourceForge.net user, >> by another site user, through the SourceForge.net site. This message >> has been delivered to your SourceForge.net mail alias. 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