Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] future directions

[Barbie <ba...@qi...>]

One thing to look at is the documentation for all scripts.

I recently had an email from a guy, who had responded to a letter of mine
that was published in Streetwise Profits, where I had called into question
the editor of the letters page for actively promoting Matt's Script Archive.
I alerted readers to the existence of NMS, and this guy had followed my
advice and downloaded the FormMail script from NMS. Unfortunately he, like
other users from the look of things, are not as technical as we are, and
many are Windows users who are using FTP apps to send their stuff to the
server.

The documentation in FormMail, and others I think, isn't really FTP client
friendly, as this guy got stuck on the "chmod +x formmail.pl" line. He
didn't know what a command line was, never mind what chmod did. While some
may think we should be aiming at technical users, the people these scripts
are aimed at are likely to not know alot about Linux/UNIX or be using an ssh
or telnet console to do the job.

Over the next few weeks I'll have a look at some of the FTP clients for
Windows and try and write some reasonable documentation for them. In the
meantime it might be worth re-reading any documentation people have written
and make sure they are Windows novice user friendly.

> When each script is released, 3 different packages will be generated for
> it, and the end user can choose which they want:

I like this idea, as that gives the user a bit more control over what they
do with the script. However, there are two further options. Having recently
looked at Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.org/), their download archive
file includes all the modules that are required by their suite of scripts,
which you have the option of including in the lib directory under cgi-bin or
ignoring completely.

The two additional packages would be the files in (1) together with required
modules, and the autoinstall (3) including the required modules.

In addition will the autoinstall be only for Linux/UNIX users? As I've
mentioned above there are Windows users out there, and there should be no
reason why any of these scripts can't run under ActivePerl. I haven't tried
out tfmail_ai so apologies if this is already a consideration.

> This will mean a more complex release process, with quite a lot of Perl
> generating the scripts from the sources in CVS.

Providing the pages of links for each are held separately, and a download
page first asks what type of install they require, then it shouldn't be too
confusing. As long as we make it as easy as possible for both novice and
experienced users to get at what they want, I think we'll have them coming
back for more.

Another thing I think that is worth mentioning, is the layout of the current
public site. While it does the job, compared to other less preferable sites
it doesn't look as professional. Even Matt's site looks alot more inviting.
Seeing as I'm going to have some CFT in a few weeks time, I'll be happy to
have a go at making it a bit more inviting.

Barbie.