[GD-General] Re: asset & document management

[Enno R. <en...@de...>]

Kent Quirk wrote:

> At 01:54 PM 5/15/2003 +0200, you wrote:
> 
> A good bug tracker is indispensable. Has bugzilla gotten any easier to 
> install since last year? I looked at it and ran away in horror.

Well, I really can't remember, it's been so long. I think you really just do 
apt-get install bugzilla and go through the configuration dialogs. You need 
a bit of understanding as to what it is you're installing there, but nothing 
horrid.

We've since adapted bugzilla a lot, and use it for all task tracking. 
Basically, nobody does anything that isn't in bugzilla, which gives us a lot 
of control and predictability. People do time estimates on their tasks, we 
use milestones extensively, and we're thinking of tying it closer together 
with CVS (in our system you can already get from the webcvs changes to the 
bugzilla task that caused the change, but as of now, you can't do it the 
other way round). And we have some rudimentary export from bugzilla to 
project to make gant charts of what's going on. nice.

> Annoyingly, by far the best product of this type I've ever used is Lotus 
> Notes. I say "annoyingly" because it's got a strange design dating back 
> to 1993. 

I rmember Notes from the mid-nineties, at university. It was weird, and 
while I can see that it would do parts of what we want, it's jsut so clunky 
to use that I can't see it being widely accepted here.

> But with all that said, we're now moving to custom XML designs for all 
> our document types. We've built the beginnings of a general-purpose XML 
> forms editor tool (there are such things available from people like 
> Altova as well). Having the data in an XML format means that it's pretty 
> easy to build/find tools to transform, catalog, index, and search in the 
> files. But you also want a decent editor to use while working with them.

So you make your design documents, slides, project plans, etc. all in those? 
Or are you saying you use the XML for indexing the documents that you make? 
Anyway, we're not big enough to spend a lot of time on building our own 
software solutions, I'm afraid.

> I'd also say that artist's opinions on data organization are highly 
> suspect. It's been my experience (and yes, I'm generalizing) that 
> artists have to be dragged kicking and screaming into any kind of 
> structured data organization. They're visual people and tend not to care 
> that much about silly things like textual names. The key is to find a 
> system that lets you find the assets you need with minimal impact on 
> artist productivity.

Jep, absolutely. OTOH, I've had some that were absolutely delighted after 
they learned about CVS and what it offers them. For small, textual 
resources, that is.

We've pretty much rolled our own in the past, too, and it's just not as 
powerful or hassle-free as a good commercial product would be, so I'd really 
like to switch. :-/

Enno.