Re: [Lcd4linux-devel] manpage for lcd4linux

[Xavier V. <xav...@fr...>]

Hi all !

> >>- what are the benefits? (besides from being 'hip', which doesn't count 
> >>for me)
> > 
> > There are a lot :
> > - using databases (for example to keep a table of porting status without
> > rewriting HTML page, just modifying the sql table) (another example :
> > news on front page).
> The same is true for for ASP and plain CGI
ASP is a ***** with VB inside. I would better code my own web server
 than using it.
plain CGI is becoming outdated and harder than PHP. PHP is embedded
within html, so it's easy to deploy.

> > - cool things : display a little box with last version, web-interface
> > news system, ...
> If you implement those things, I guess you're already implementing some 
> kind of "content management system". Nothing bad at all, but probably 
> not a feature of PHP itself, but rather one you added with your coding 
> (and may I say, content management systems existe with plain CGI too).
You're right

> All of the above is also true for ASP, and I avoid it like the plague 
> (for various reasons). So why should we go for PHP, instead of plain 
> HTML, or docbook (and pages generated on demand) or m4 (I run one site 
> that's mainly static, which is generated using m4)?
In fact, I propose to code a sort of 'content managing system', and then
integrate docbook-generated docs. The advantage is for the maintainance
(news, new pages, ...).

> And while we're at it - when it comes to easily editing the pages (by 
> several people), why not go with a content management system like 
> PHP-Website (which is what leaf.sourceforge.net runs, for example)? It 
> has a learning curve, but probably less so than coding directly in PHP. 
> And the project leader at LEAF has pretty good connections to the PHP- 
> Website crew, so getting help should not be a problem.
I'm not really sure to understand you. Is PHP-Website an online-editing
CMS ?

> >>- what are the drawbacks?
> > Just one, it's one more language to learn ! But it's the same base
> > syntax as C and Perl, so no high learning price.
> > Another drawback was that at the beginning php wasn't supported by all
> > hosters, but now it's supported everywhere :)
> Well, I would like to add to that the fact that it's somewhat slow (not 
> PHP itself, but it surely is slow on most sourceforge servers I've seen)
I don't think PHP produces a lot of lag. Maybe SF servers are
  overloaded sometimes by bad-coded php pages ;) But this aspect can't
 be a stopper.

> > Believe me, PHP generates HTML code, so it isn't heavier than pure
> >   HTML. I really dislike flash and JS. The only 'overload' is on the
> >  server, but don't worry.
> Well, but nobody would ever edit the HTML code generated by PHP, so 
> what's your point? I mean, to me, PHP is a means to generate HTML - 
> which is fundamentally different from HTML itself. I'm surely not 
> proficient in PHP (and I don't plan to be any time soon), and I know 
> that one can use inline HTML in PHP (or at least, I recall that being a 
> possibiliy), but that surely doesn't equate to HTML itself. Again, I 
> don't mean to put PHP down, I'd just like to keep the facts straight.
You're not clear at this. But My vision is to use PHP to 'assist' page
 writing : for 'normal' pages (not news or things like this), php is to
 insert headers, menu and things like this, and provide link(), img(),
 title() functions to avoid caring about which CSS class title use.

> I just wanted to put give a second opinion (and granted, a very negative 
> one), based on my experience with other projects, where people have 
> promised to take over maintenance of a web-page (the technology itself 
> is rather irrelevant, actually) - in all those projects, this concept 
> didn't go well in the long term. It's usually a good idea to use the 
> skills of several people in the team, rather than rely on one single 
> person to do everything that's needed for a certain task.
I propose to code the engine (in fact, I'll start from zero instead of
 re-using the bloated zwe), which will be easy to understand, and then
 enverybody will be able to upload pages, maintain different sections  
 ... Menu, pools, some variables will be on mysql tables. I don't want
 to (and can't) take over the maintainance of the site, just the coding
 part, and help Jerry and Michael to write the pages.

Bye !
-- 
Xavier VELLO <xav...@fr...>