Re: [TM4J-users] TM4J project web site & XTM (was RE: new member)

[Kal A. <ka...@te...>]

At 10:10 21/11/2001 +0100, Florian wrote:
>Hello.
>
>[Kal]
>| In terms of the website. I would really like the website to be designed
>| with the concepts of topic maps in mind. I think it would be
>| great to make
>| use of topic maps to generate the site - even if it is initially static
>| HTML pages, it would be good if the sources for those pages are linked
>| together not only with normal <href> links, but also are
>| organised within a
>| topic map which could then be used to automatically insert extra
>| navigation
>| links into the HTML. However, that is getting a little to advanced too
>| quickly.
>
>Agreed. :-) I have suggested similar ideas to Thomas, and as far as I recall
>I also once had a conversation with you about eventually using XTM as
>something like a CMS for the web site, and bringing everything alive with
>Tomcat, Velocity etc.

That should definitely be the long-term goal. I had also thought that in 
the medium-term, Velocity could be used because (as I understand it) it can 
also be used for scripted generation of static HTML sites (by running it in 
a 'batch' mode). However, I do agree with you about the short term goal 
being to improve the design and content of the existing site. "First we 
crawl....then we crawl on broken glass" (lovely quote from "Effective STL" ;-)

>Nonetheless, I think what we need on the site for now is some useful
>information about the project at hand, what its goals and who the people
>involved are, and all that preferably in some sort of half-way spiffy
>design. What might be a good starting point is the documentation already
>available (dev guide etc.) -- I guess reinventing the wheel is always a bad
>idea.

Yep. I think these are the pieces that we need (some of which we already 
have, although most will need updating for the next release):

Download, Build & Installation - should be fairly short, step-by-step 
guide, listing requirements and installation procedure as well as links to 
software on Sourceforge and CVS tree for the brave.

Developer's Guide - similar to the existing guide. I think the things to 
concentrate on are the "non-topic-map" parts of the toolkit. Things like 
the tm4j.net and tm4j.topicmap.utils packages (loading and saving) as well 
as TopicMapFactory, TopicMapProvider, and TopicMapProviderFactory.

Command-line App Documentation - we only have a couple of command-line apps 
in the distribution at the moment, but it would be good to develop a 
template for documenting such applications.

FAQ
         TM4J FAQ
         Topicmap FAQ (or a link to one)
         Topicmap Deesign FAQ (or a link to one)

Project Information -
         who does what
         To do list
         Plans for 0.6
         Links to related projects (e.g. other projects using TM4J or other 
topic-map related opensource projects)
         Links to TMAPI.

>Actually generating the site from XTM exclusively is, I think, beyond our
>possibilities at the moment. For now, we don't even have a set of XSLT
>stylesheets we can use in order to transform everything into HTML. Thomas
>and I are thinking about taking care of that eventually, but for now we have
>to acknowledge that what we've got is quite little. Unless of course you,
>Kal, talk to your friends at Ontopia and they give away the Omnigator for
>free! :-)

That would be an idea - though we would need somewhere to host it too - 
Sourceforge don't support JSP on their hosts :-( As we reach the point of 
needing a dynamically generated site from XTM, it would be nice to do it 
with TM4J tools anyway - and I think that within that time frame some 
alternative hosting solution may come up...Especially if my consulting 
takes off ;-)


>So, perhaps it would be best if we concentrated on a standard-issue, static
>HTML site for now, and take a more relaxed approach for developing The TM4J
>Topic  Map (which we certainly need, but not just as a basis for a project
>web site). The brainstorm idea is great for that. How about if we set aside
>a directory in the CVS tree for that purpose? I guess it would make more
>sense to actually present one's views and ideas as Topic Maps, rather than
>having to use prose and e-mail.

That's a really good idea! I'll create a "sandbox" project in CVS that we 
can play in. Anyone who wants to post ideas who does not have CVS access 
should feel free to email them to me and I can upload them.

>And by the way, is this thread really where it's supposed to be? :-) I think
>that since we are discussing things pertaining primarily to development
>issues (OK, not Java code, but things that, for the most part, concern the
>project developers), wouldn't it be a better idea to move this over to
>tm4j-developers?

I debated that (with myself ;-) and thought that it might be nice to hear 
from any lurkers on this list as to what kinds of information you would 
like to see on the site. Otherwise we end up with "what the developers want 
to say" rather than "what the users want to know". So, lurkers, speak up!

Cheers,

Kal