Subject: Re: development questions

From: Alexey Borzov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 22:01:30 +0300

Hi!

Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>>Dave, I'm thinking we could probably put his code on a new virtual test
>>domain, though I'd like to look through the code more before we get to that
>>step, but it seems like a good next step...
> 
> In preparation for this, Alexey, is there anything that we need to have
> installed?  Specific modules that will be needed?

Well, the only thing that comes to mind is that gettext module should be 
compiled into PHP.

Then PEAR should be installed as well (as HTML_Template_Sigma package is used). 
This can be done locally, but PHP 4.2+ is required nonetheless.

---

From: Alexey Borzov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 22:15:17 +0300

Hi!

Andreas Grabmüller wrote:
> When I saw Alexeys posts, I decided to not answer them - it's difficult for me to have an objective opinion as I simply don't like the way Alexey came in and said "everything you do sucks, what I do is the only right way you can do that". That makes me think "what the hell does that guy want from us?". However, let me try it.

You are unfair to yourself. While the code I inherited could use some 
optimisations (and I did optimise some parts of it) I mostly had just to 
refactor the existing code, it already worked OK.

> I have reviewed the code and it looks good - most of it seems to work, much of my code has been optimized.
> 
> I can't say if this code is good or this code is bad. He did the changes he stated in his mail, and they seem to work and the code techincally looks good (at least better than mine). The question is, do we want to have this changes? I like the template usage and the new path format page.html.{ln}. I personally don't like the usage of gettext as for me this seems to be overhead - before we had a php file containing all variables, now we have several .po etc. files which have to be edited by special software (I think?). All this is just a question of the personal point of view.

Yes, it is the matter of taste. The benefit of having .po files instead of .php 
files is (like I see it):
1) .po files are generated automatically and thus it is more difficult to have 
the translations that are out of sync due to programmer error.
2) It is not difficult to edit the .po files. There is some special software, 
but I just used the same PHPEdit to prepare the Russian translation, as if I was 
editing the plain text files.

---

From: Alexey Borzov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 22:21:15 +0300

Hi!

Robert Treat wrote:
>>No. CVS access and user accounts are only given to people following
>>continued good quality work over a period of time.
> 
> and people who we know we can work with in a non-abrasive manner.

Got the point. ;]

>>>4) Is there any checklist for rolling out the "new" website?
>>
>>No - that depends very much on what is required to rollout any new code.
> 

Yes, that's exactly what I want right now --- look through my code.

>>>5) Are you familiar with Jakob Nielsen's writings?
>>
>>Nope.
> 
> I am. Actually I used to be the user experience advocate for a large recruting 
> company.  I've noticed It's tough to convince developers to go with his 
> recomendations sometimes :-)

I wanted to know whether the people on this maillist are aware of "usability" 
stuff. 'Cause unfortunately the current website badly breaks some of the 
well-respected guidelines.

>>>6) Do you know any professional web-designers?
>>
>>Yes. Why?
> 
> maybe he has money to hire some one?  :-)

No, I don't. ;] But I think that there are some people on the maillists (or some 
personal acquaintances) who would be willing to contribute their work for free.

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 15:54:24 -0400 (AST)

> This can be done locally, but PHP 4.2+ is required nonetheless.

Done ... and we run PHP 4.3.4 w/gettext by default, so you should be okay
there also ...

t1# pear install HTML_Template_Sigma
downloading HTML_Template_Sigma-1.0.2.tgz ...
...done: 25,765 bytes
install ok: HTML_Template_Sigma 1.0.2

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: [email-masked]           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664

---

From: Alexey Borzov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2004 10:31:08 +0300

Hi!

> install ok: HTML_Template_Sigma 1.0.2

OK then. Now what should we do: will you give me access to the box or should I 
prepare the sources for installation and send them to someone?