Subject: Hello and some questions

From: "Gavin M. Roy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 13:34:18 -0800

Hey everyone,

  Looks like I was able to con Dave into letting me on this list. ;-) 
j/k.   I've been going through the archives to get caught up to speed 
and I wanted to ask a couple of basic overview questions:

1. What is the current take on having one common design that is an 
integration of look, feel, and navigation across all of the sub-sites?
2.  What is the current preference on programming languages for the 
seperate sites?
3.  Is programatic content management being done at all on the sites, or 
are they done via manual HTML editing?
4. What areas are open to modification, discussion, design and 
implementation, and what are off limits?

Sorry if I'm asking any redundant questions that could be found farther 
back in the archives.

Thanks,

Gavin

---

From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 19:51:06 -0500

> and I wanted to ask a couple of basic overview questions:

I'm quasi piggybacking dave's response here...

> integration of look, feel, and navigation across all of the sub-sites?

The current plan goes something like this:
1) Finish work on Andreas' code to make the main www multi-lingual. 
2a) Fold the links/information from advocacy into the main www site.
2b) Fold the links/information from develope. into the main www site.
3a) Determine which parts of techdocs we want moved into the main www site. 
3b) Move any remaining bits of techdocs into a new architecture (current is 
crufty php manually maintained) I personally think it should be openacs, but 
even homebrew php done correctly would be a major upgrade. 

> implementation, and what are off limits?

I don't think anything is offlimits, but IMO anything other than work on 
Andreas' code is a waste of time right now... you can get Andreas code from 
CVS. please start hacking on it. please.

Robert Treat
-- 
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 14:07:20 -0800

Robert,

> even homebrew php done correctly would be a major upgrade. 

The problem is that OpenACS is an architecture, it's *not* a content manager.   
Honestly, my first thought when Justin "handed over" techdocs to me (not that 
I;ve done anything with it) was to contact the OpenACS folks and see if there 
was a full-service CMS built on OpenACS.  There's not.

Also, Bricolage's setup of generating static files from dynamic content should 
work a lot better with our site setup.  It would mean that the majority of 
the Techdocs material could be mirrored just like the rest of www.

If I end up running Techdocs, or if Elein does (I've suggested it becuase of 
the amount of energy she's put into General Bits) we're going to want a real 
CMS so that we don't spend time debugging HMTL/PHP that could be better spent 
managing authors and writing.

-- 
-Josh Berkus
 Aglio Database Solutions
 San Francisco

---

From: "Gavin M. Roy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 14:38:47 -0800

Not that I'm trying to stir things up, but I do have a fairly solid php 
cms infrastructure that can be used, and would love to have you guys 
evaluate for use... it would require a php/pgsql setup for www hosts, 
and we would use replication to drive the content down.  Yes a major 
change in how things are structured, but change can be good.

Gavin

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 15:50:54 -0800

Marc,

> Not that I'm advocating one solution over another, but doesn't OACS 5.x
> have a CMS?

News to me.  Has anyone seen it?

-- 
-Josh Berkus

______AGLIO DATABASE SOLUTIONS___________________________
                                        Josh Berkus
   Complete information technology 	[email-masked]
    and data management solutions 	(415) 565-7293
   for law firms, small businesses 	 fax 621-2533
    and non-profit organizations. 	San Francisco

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 19:59:11 -0400 (AST)

On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Josh Berkus wrote:

> The problem is that OpenACS is an architecture, it's *not* a content
> manager.  Honestly, my first thought when Justin "handed over" techdocs
> to me (not that I;ve done anything with it) was to contact the OpenACS
> folks and see if there was a full-service CMS built on OpenACS.
> There's not.

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

---

From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 08:32:53 -0500

On Tuesday 16 December 2003 17:07, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Robert,
>
> > 3b) Move any remaining bits of techdocs into a new architecture (current
> > is crufty php manually maintained) I personally think it should be
> > openacs, but even homebrew php done correctly would be a major upgrade.
>
> manager. 

The problem is that everyone talks about what needs to be done but no one 
actually does anything...

> Honestly, my first thought when Justin "handed over" techdocs to
> me (not that I;ve done anything with it) was to contact the OpenACS folks
> and see if there was a full-service CMS built on OpenACS.  There's not.

I'm no openacs expert, but there are multiple CMS packages available. Whether 
they meet your definition of "full featured" I couldn't say.

>
> Also, Bricolage's setup of generating static files from dynamic content
> should work a lot better with our site setup.  It would mean that the
> majority of the Techdocs material could be mirrored just like the rest of
> www.

yep, thats a bonus, though given we don't serve developer, techdocs, or 
advocacy through the mirror system now, I wouldn't think that its a terribly 
high priority.  A better feature would be openacs 5.x support for 
internationalization, which IIRC we won't be getting with bric. 

>
> If I end up running Techdocs, or if Elein does (I've suggested it becuase
> of the amount of energy she's put into General Bits) we're going to want a
> real CMS so that we don't spend time debugging HMTL/PHP that could be
> better spent managing authors and writing.

This is too rich. As the guy who has actually been stymied on several attempts 
to move techdocs into the future, and the one who is actually updating the 
content now, please let me know when one of you two is ready to "start 
running things".   You seem to think that there is some floodgate of authors 
writing articles with no way to get them on-line... I just don't think thats 
the case.  Techdocs works better when the casual passer by can post responses 
and updates to articles on the fly, building upon others body of work.  This 
is why the guides portion has done well, but the downside to using the 
wiki software is that you generally have no good way to publish content that 
you want to remain static. acs gives you both of these things, which is why i 
think it's worth investigating.   But as I said before, even homebrew php 
done correctly would be a big improvment over the code we have now.  Right now 
1/2 the site is straight files, 1/2 is coming from a database that's laid out 
badly and theres little to no interface into the database other than a 
mismatched version of psql...
<sigh>
but all of this is secondary to getting Andreas code finished up so we can 
begin unifying the various websites.  Thats where we really need to 
concentrate because it is the roadblock to new development...

Robert Treat

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 09:32:12 -0800

Robert,

> actually does anything...

Yep.

> I'm no openacs expert, but there are multiple CMS packages available.
> Whether they meet your definition of "full featured" I couldn't say.

There didn't used to be.  Maybe there are now.

> This is too rich. As the guy who has actually been stymied on several
> attempts to move techdocs into the future, and the one who is actually
> updating the content now, please let me know when one of you two is ready
> to "start running things".

Um, no offense, but I don't see anything happening with Techdocs now, from 
anybody.  Including you.

   You seem to think that there is some floodgate
> of authors writing articles with no way to get them on-line... I just don't
> think thats the case.  

Have you taken a look at General Bits lately?   Elein manages to get 2 new 
articles a week -- partly because she's persistent, and partly becuase 
authors submitting to General Bits don't need to do their own HTML 
formatting.

> Techdocs works better when the casual passer by can
> post responses and updates to articles on the fly, building upon others
> body of work. 

Yeah, that would be cool.

> concentrate because it is the roadblock to new development...

Agreed.

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

---

From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 Dec 2003 16:24:49 -0500

> Um, no offense, but I don't see anything happening with Techdocs now, from 

Like maintaining the list of hosting providers? Or the list of support
companies? Or researching and updating missing/broken articles? Or
adding new articles and links? Maybe those types of things aren't sexy
enough for you though? 

Early on I tried to get some kind of revision system set up by getting
the code into CVS, to allow anyone to get access to enable contributing,
only to have folks bypass CVS and/or complain that CVS wasn't an
acceptable form on managing content, so I acquiesced.  

I also tried to get the site moved over to the new VM, but we got
stalled there after Dave/Marc had trouble getting Zope set up and Justin
was unable to assist. Shortly there after the plan to set up and move
everything to bric was announced, so again I acquiesced.

The next thing I started doing was some planning on content that could
be moved out of techdocs and onto the main www server code, only to be
stymied there because of Andreas work which would lead toward parallel
development. 

Even now I feel like rewriting some pieces of the back end, but it seems
like a waste of time if we ever get Andreas code done and/or the site
moved into bric...

I wont argue that techdocs is somewhat of a bastard child these days,
but it's certainly not due to lack of effort on my part.  

> authors submitting to General Bits don't need to do their own HTML 

Help me out 'cause I don't see all of these articles you are referring
to. Unless you're referring to the different sections of each issue of
General Bits (?) which Elaine writes herself (which are pruned from the
mailing lists...)  But I certainly can't find the "two new articles a
week" of the caliber you find on techdocs (Set Returning Functions, Full
Text Indexing, Adventures In PostgreSQL, etc..)  Don't get me wrong,
there are some good articles on the General Bits site, like the recent
article you co-authored on performance tuning, but given that Elein
doesn't use a fancy CMS nor were you refused help with putting your
articles up on techdocs, I don't see how her site's architecture has any
bearing on getting articles written.  IMHO it's too bad she doesn't use
her persistence to help improve the situation with the community sites
rather than splintering things further on her own (something I have
mentioned to her before).  

You know though, I see a pattern here... take the jobs.postgresql.org
site, which is still not updated with the text that I suggested close to
two weeks ago. While several people keep kicking back and forth ideas on
what would be the ideal solution for a jobs site, Marc has quietly
implemented a solution (the jobs mailing list) that offers the majority
of functionality that most people would want, yet outside of myself
there has been virtually no support given for that idea, I guess since
people didn't think it was good enough... ?  

> > concentrate because it is the roadblock to new development...

Actually thats not totally fair to Andreas and Co., since there is
nothing stopping you all from installing bric and moving content into
it...

Robert Treat

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 00:31:59 -0400 (AST)

> everything to bric was announced, so again I acquiesced.

Hrmmm ... I don't remember this, but my memory just isn't what it used to
be ... it should just be a matter of copying /usr/local/www/zope over to
the main VM though ... do you happen to recall what issues we got stymied
on?  Is Zope the only thing that problematic to move?  Any other
requirements?

> nothing stopping you all from installing bric and moving content into

What is stop'ng anyone from installing bric and running with it?  Out of
all the conversations I've seen on this whole thing, I *think* its always
come back to using bric ... if that is the case, let's do it ...

----

---

From: Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 09:06:35 +0100

>come back to using bric ... if that is the case, let's do it ...

Mmm.

I've been lurking on these lists and I wonder about this:

has a small overview been made what _exactly_ you want to do with the
site and what features it should have?

Only from that point can you even start to work towards an
implementation.

Right now for tendra.org (not visible, should be later on today) I
started with bare HTML and am moving it to XML/XSLT and XHTML.  This
allows me to write skeleton files for the layout and have simple XML
files where people can record entries and have the XML/XSLT stuff take
care of updating the webpages by means of makefiles.  Of course, it is
pretty simple, but suitable for what I need.

Now, if you guys say, we have X number of diehard HTML/SGML/XML and so
on experts and that's way too low for our community to administer the
website, yeah, then I can understand why you want to go the CMS way.

Are you guys looking at a system that allows people, kind of like how a
weblog does it, to submit texts, have other people (website
maintainers/moderators) approve them and have the underlying system take
care of it, be it versioned or not?

-- 
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <asmodai(at)wxs.nl> / asmodai / kita no mono
PGP fingerprint: 2D92 980E 45FE 2C28 9DB7  9D88 97E6 839B 2EAC 625B
http://www.tendra.org/   | http://diary.in-nomine.org/
What did you see that was so terrible?  Myself.

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 09:14:22 -0800

Robert,

> adding new articles and links? Maybe those types of things aren't sexy

I didn't know that you were doing that ... it's not really visible from the 
main page, and I've not been getting any of the e-mail.   So, by the 
principles of Volunteerocracy, you are now in charge.  What do *you* want to 
do with Techdocs?

> acceptable form on managing content, so I acquiesced.

Hmmm ... I recall saying that CVS was not adequate as a CMS but was better 
than flat HTML.  Who else did you get oppostion from?  Justin?

> mailing lists...) 

http://www.varlena.com/varlena/GeneralBits/Tidbits/index.php
... but you're right, it's more like 1 per week.

> But I certainly can't find the "two new articles a
> Text Indexing, Adventures In PostgreSQL, etc..) 

>  Don't get me wrong,

She's been led to believe, by some former members of our community, that there 
is some kind of secret cabal running our Web presence and that she is not 
welcome.   I've been working on disabusing her of that notion.  Offering to 
put her "in charge" of Techdocs seemed like a good move in that regard.  
There's also the issue of her advertising revenue, but that should be 
surmountable.

Funny you should bring up the Indexing articles, though ... you know why there 
was never a third or forth one?   Because I got bogged down doing the markup, 
and trying to revise the 1st two articles which are already marked up ....  
so really, my emphasis on a CMS is all about *me*.   *I* don't want to do 
manual HTML markup on everything I write; the magazines I submit articles do 
don't require me to format them (heck, they don't *want* me to format them), 
and overall I've found that it took me as long to markup Indexing II as it 
took me to write it.   Nor do I want you doing the markup, I want you working 
on other stuff for the community.

I happen to believe that there are other potential authors ... Stephan Szabo, 
Robert Bernier, Joe Conway, etc, ... who would write for our web sites if 
they had a clearer and easier access path to do so.

> what would be the ideal solution for a jobs site, 

As far as I'm concerned, the discussion is secondary to the effort.   My 
company will be contributing *complete* code from our specification becuase 
it is of indirect commercial benefit to us.   Nobody from the www group needs 
to waste time on it until somebody is ready to add features.   

Also, I think you should get used to the fact that in OSS projects there are 6 
people on mailing lists arguing about stuff for every 1 person who actually 
does anything.  Heck, 1 of 7 is pretty good in comparison to OpenOffice.org, 
where it's more like 1 of 150.

> Marc has quietly

It's not good enough for my company, which is why we're working on a 
replacement.  Until our replacement is ready, though, I think that we 
definitely need to get the text and references to the mailing list up.   
What' the holdup on this?   Does anyone know where jobs.postgresql.org is 
stored?

> nothing stopping you all from installing bric and moving content into

Yes, there is, but that's completely tangental to Andreas' effort.   We've a 
huge job creating all of the templates for Bric.   Once those templates are 
created, it's easy, but until then ....

And I just worked the PR for 7.4, and then lost my office, so I've been a 
little distracted.   Nobody's paying me to work on the community full time 
any more than you.

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 13:35:20 -0400 (AST)

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Josh Berkus wrote:

> She's been led to believe, by some former members of our community, that
> there is some kind of secret cabal running our Web presence and that she
> is not welcome.

Well, there is a "cabal", but our membership requirements are kinda lax :)

> What' the holdup on this?  Does anyone know where jobs.postgresql.org is

Currently, same VM as techdocs, but, if there are no special requirements
like with techdocs, we can very easily redirect/move it to the main VM ...
its just an IP change in DNS ... just say the word ...

----

---

From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Dec 2003 12:57:12 -0500

> > definitely need to get the text and references to the mailing list up.

That's all I would ask.  Something is better than nothing as they say...

> its just an IP change in DNS ... just say the word ...

right, it's on the same VM. I'd have updated the text myself but I don't
have rights to the directory/files...

Marc, I think it would be a good idea to move it to the main VM now
before we get to involved in anything new.  

Robert Treat

---

From: "Dave Page" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 18:07:29 -0000 (GMT)

It's rumoured that Josh Berkus once said:
> I didn't know that you were doing that ... it's not really visible from
> the  main page, and I've not been getting any of the e-mail.   So, by
> the  principles of Volunteerocracy, you are now in charge.

Most of the mail goes to the webmaster address, and is handled by Robert
and I (depending on it's content). Robert has undertaken that role and the
maintenance of techdocs since Justin stepped down. That takeover was
certainly discussed on the lists, but granted that was before we archived
it.
> She's been led to believe, by some former members of our community,
> that there  is some kind of secret cabal running our Web presence and
> that she is not  welcome.

I assume 'some former members' is actually 'one former member'? By all
means, she is welcome to join the party - tell her to subscribe to the
list and CC me so I know she's done it and I'll approve her request.
> I've been working on disabusing her of that
> notion.  Offering to  put her "in charge" of Techdocs seemed like a
> good move in that regard.

That is definately a community decision to make.

Regards, Dave.

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 15:06:56 -0400 (AST)

> before we get to involved in anything new.

Done ... /usr/local/www/jobs.postgresql.org/www on the www.postgresql.org
VM ... DNS is changed to reflect the change in IP ...

----

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 13:29:52 -0800

Robert,

> That's all ancient history at this point... we'll welcome contributions
> from anyone, as long as there willing to work with the rest of the
> team... 

I'll invite her to join WWW.

> Maybe I underestimate the complexity, but sending it to me and me
> dumping it into html seems pretty easy... isn't this essentially what
> Elein is doing now ?

At least with my articles on Techdocs, the formatting was more complex than 
that (code examples are a real pain).  And it is what Elein is doing now, 
which is also a bottleneck.

The advantage of a good CMS is that it "runs itself";  people contribute stuff 
and other people approve it and it goes up, and this can all be a distributed 
effort.  Currently, people need root-level shell access to the VM to modify 
anything.

> exactly... how long do we wait for these solutions to appear? if we can
> do something now I think it's a step in the right direction.

jobs.postgresql.org?  End of January, maybe.   It's code we've done before.
 
> whose working on that? you/elein?  is there some way others could pitch
> in?

Yes.   Let me find out from David Fetter if the test server is still 
accessable.

> well, don't know that that is entirely true, given your company does
> postgresql support, they do have a direct benefit from your
> participation and gain a lot more from widening the community... really
> a side issue though...

That's why I said "full time"; right now I balance community management & 
contributions with direct-pay work.

-- 
-Josh Berkus

---

From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Dec 2003 16:33:35 -0500

> principles of Volunteerocracy, you are now in charge.  What do *you* want to 

I want to get someone else to run it :-)  I'm only involved because
someone has to do it and no one else is stepping up to the plate. Same
thing goes for advocacy really... Justin left and someone had to pick up
the slack.  It was discussed with others here and that's what shook out,
but I'll glad step aside if anyone else wants to run with it. Fair
warning though, the code in it's current shape is a bear to work with.
And that's really part of the issue... I don't want to spend my time
improving code if people are planning on running these sites under
different technology.    

> than flat HTML.  Who else did you get oppostion from?  Justin?

At least... I started moving things into CVS and he installed plone on
the site and kept updating files on the server... 

 

Robert Treat