Re: [Indic-computing-devel] [RFC] indic-computing website improvements.

[Cherry G. M. <ch...@sd...>]

Dear Koshy, list,

I had deliberately kept from replying earlier to see how active this list
is. Rather heartening to see that there are exactly two enthusiastic
volunteers :-), one a veteran, the other a newbie ;-)

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, [iso-8859-1] Joseph Koshy wrote:
[...]
> > critical-mass in terms of volunteers for site maintanence and content
> > management, we could think about diversifying.
>
> We are using different tools for different requirements.
>
> DocBook is being used for the 'heavy-duty' documentation that needs
[...]
> However, there seems to be only one person working on the website
> (me :)) and I find EtText more of a hindrance than a benefit.

Yes, EtText doesn't seem to be much help other than to distract one from
the content. It brings us back to WYSIWIG, rather that WYMIWIG.
I learnt it the hard way while trying to fix up my own private website
with WebMake.

> >  Can we cut down on the number of tools used for documentation
> > maintanence ? As of now, a prospective documenter has to know 6
[...]
>
> If you are writing documentation, today you need to know only
> two tools, any text editor ('vi' or 'emacs' say) for editing
> and 'make' to build everything.  You don't really need to know
> how the rest of the toolchain works -- the intent is that 'every
> thing just works'.  For documentation, we are using one SGML "format"
> namely, DocBook.
>

Hmmm, that's making the presumption that someone on the list (which boils
down to A. Joseph Koshy) will take care of the SGML. Sounds very
altruistic, however doesn't address the basic issue of a steep learning
curve. However, I'm sure its the best ad-hoc solution, considering the
circumstances.....


> The website could conceivably be written using DocBook too (for
[...]
> In the end I chose plain HTML for the website's content and 'WebMake'
> to stich the pieces of the site's content into a coherent website.
>

Yes, I think that does make sense.

> Coming to casual contributors, these folks aren't affected by the
> internals of the toolchain (or even the specfics of HTML or DocBook)
> since they can contribute using plain-text too.
>

Thanks Koshy! We need more sincere volunteers like you. I'll try and learn
the hard pieces, so that I could help with the internals as well, but
that'll take a while. I'm sure you've held the fort for too long for that
to make a significant difference. So there, that's my offer ( like the GPL
"Without even the guarantee of Merchantability of fitness for any
particular purpose........" ;-) )

> Joseph Koshy, FreeBSD Developer, http://people.freebsd.org/~jkoshy/
> Founder/Manager/Programmer/Peon, The Indic-Computing Project
                             ^^^^

I can see why now!

Best,

Cherry.

--
ch...@sd...
Homepage - http://cherry.freeshell.org