Re: Web Site is Down

["John Stowers" <john stowers gmail com>]

On Feb 12, 2008 9:49 AM, Brent Gueth <creeva gmail com> wrote:
> Ok that being fixed now - thanks - shows someone watches the mailing
> list- let me bring up why I joined.

Hehe, yeah, Its been a bit quiet lately.

> I've been using conduit for a few months on and off and finally got a
> setup that works for me.   The whole problem is that I've always felt
> I was going it alone since the documentation was lacking.  Sure I
> could have ran by the mailing list, but the help file is more or less
> useless and no howto's or how functions work on your website.

Completely agree. Personally I try really hard to write documentation
which encourages developers to join the project (to keep it
sustainable). I recently spent about a week getting this up to date
[1]. The reason I bring this up, is that it showed me that writing
documentation on a wiki is far easier than doing so using the gnome
documentation tools and docbook.

If you are running Conduit from SVN you will have noticed that there
is now a Developers sub-menu in the help menu.

>
> There is no "well this functionality works" "that functionality isn't
> intended", or" we're looking at it."  I thinkthis is one of the things
> that could definitely put this fantastic app over the top.   I'm not a
> person that is just going to gripe and complain, I want to help out in
> this department, especially since this is the kind of application I
> can rally behind.  It can be the bridge that attaches the web as the
> sync/backup/storage space of the local computer.   People just need to
> be shown how.
>
> What can I do to get involved and help make your documentation a thing
> that works instead of an after thought.

Because I found editing a wiki a lot easier than editing docbook I
have gone and created a page on the GNOME wiki for some Conduit
documentation [2]. I would be incredibly thankful for any
contributions you could make to this, as I am sure as soon as it gets
momentum, others will help write it. I know I will.

You are correct about what the documentation should actually show. I
believe it should start with some introductory concepts like data
flowing left to right, how to configure stuff, etc. Then some examples
of how people are using conduit could be given, followed by specific
help configuring each data provider.

You are also correct about keeping an up to date list of what things
conduit supports, what is intended, and what isnt. The conduit
SyncStatus page is reasonably up to date WRT what things we can talk
to. In addition, the test results show, at any given time, how well
each tested backend is working. I did originally plan to autogenerate
a matrix of supported sync configurations, but the autotest framework
was never finished. I believe now however, that the best way to show
what conduit supports is through examples for each case, or at least a
subset of cases such that people can do things like "oh I didnt
realise that by using gnome-obex-ftp I can take my camera phone photos
and put them on Flickr". That sort of thing is too specific to list
(IMHO) but the sort of thing you want people to experiment with once
you show them how generalizable Conduit it.

Anyway, I would really like to help you write some Conduit
documentation, and the GNOME wiki is probably the easiest place to
start doing so. It can then be trivially moved into the proper help
system at a later date.

Is this a sensible plan?

Regards,

John

[1] http://www.conduit-project.org/wiki/Development
[2] http://live.gnome.org/action/edit/Conduit/Documentation
[3] http://www.conduit-project.org/wiki/SyncStatus
[4] http://tests.conduit-project.org/