Re: [generguide-devel] One of ways to popularize project:

[Cameron S. <ca...@sh...>]

On Saturday 28 Jun 2003 10:11 pm, Artur Hefczyc wrote:
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> On Saturday 28 of June 2003 16:35, Cameron Shorter wrote:
> > On Friday 27 Jun 2003 3:40 pm, Artur Hefczyc wrote:
> > > As I noted google refreshes his data base about twice a week.
> > > So it seems to me it would be good to publish all our sections
> > > as sample guides on project site.
> >
> > Yes, it is already part of the site.  See links at:
> > http://generguide.sourceforge.net/sampleguides.html
> > (This guide is a week or 2 old)
> > Is this what you are talking about?
>
> I was thinking about something different.
> We have more than 50 SGML files in directory generguide/guide.
> I suggest to generate HTML version of all of them and make them
> available from project web site.

We have the whole guide at:
http://generguide.sourceforge.net/developersguide/developersguide.html

I think we should try to avoid having more than one copy of the guides on the 
site otherwise we will confuse readers.
We could break html pages into chunks by using the chunks stylesheet.

>
> I can see 2 benefits:
> 1. Someone browsing and reading our project site can think something
> like that:
> "Interesting project, authors suggest to use their documents as
> templates and patterns for my project developers guide. Ok, I would
> like to see first, what parts I can use for my guide and than maybe
> I will try to use it."
> So giving easy access to HTML version we can improve chance
> that someone start to use it.
> It seems to me giving full sample guide (GeoTools) is not exactly the same.
>
> I have also another idea what is next step after above. If you agree for
> such move I would like to create page containing list of all sections
> places in following HTML form:
> input1: "Project name"
> input2: "Project site"
> input3: "Project developer"
> list of checkboxes for each available section (each section name is URL to
> section text):
> x  -  cvs
> x  -  ant
> x  -  doc license
> x  -  design
> x  -  coding conventions
> <submit>
> After user fill form and click <submit> button, sample developers guide
> should be generated. I think it should not be very difficult to set it up
> on SF site as cgi script.

I love this idea!!!
Maybe from the form, we can create links to the generic developers guide.
It will be made slightly complicated by having selectable sections within 
sections.
Eg:
x Communication
  x IRC
  o email

Actually, I wonder whether we could automate building the form by running a 
style sheet over the developer's guide and extracting editable sections?

Also, on the form, put a [View] button next to each section which would call a 
cgi script which builds the section in real time:
Eg:

x Communication  [View]
  x IRC  [View]
  o email [View]

In above example, email is not selected, so when View Communication is 
selected the Communication section is shown IRC but not email sections.

>
> 2. Our documents describe many aspects of software development.
> If we present them on project site, google will index them in it's DB.
> So I expect people looking for particular development information can
> find our project site much easier. The more they can not only learn
> something about subject they are interested in at the moment of reading
> but also they can find our project interesting for different purposes than
> just source of information.

Yes, isn't this what the following URL is giving us?
http://generguide.sourceforge.net/developersguide/developersguide.html

>
> I did some experiment in few last weeks. I put some pages (I wrote earlier)
> about emacs, jdee and xml on my home machine and pointed to them
> from wttools project site.
> I have been watching logs about pages visit. Most of visitors were
> directed to my machine from Google as response to query containing
> for example: "emacs xml" or "dtd xml".

Yes, maybe we need to put some references to generguide in prominent places on 
the web.

-- 
Cameron Shorter              http://shorter.net/cameron
Open Source Developer        http://mapbuilder.sourceforge.net
                             http://geotools.org
Senior Software Engineer     http://www.adi-limited.com/