Re: Open Document Environment (ODE)

["Greg Ferguson" <gferg hoop timonium sgi com>]

On Jan 9, 12:01pm, Aaron Turner wrote:
> Subject: Re: Open Document Environment (ODE)
> On Sun, 9 Jan 2000, Greg Ferguson wrote:
>
> >
> > Have you seen the work of the Dublin Core group, the work
> > done by Debian Doc project or what has been done by Paul
> > Jones and the crew at Metalab? If not, you should examine
> > these documents, which describe a methodology for "resource
> > discovery". We, too (SGI) are incorporating a paradigm such
> > as this in the Linux documentation and products we are currently
> > preparing for release:
>
> [snip]
>
> I took a quick look at the links, and I'm not sure how that would help
> discovery of what applications/utilities/etc are installed on a clients
> system as it doesn't seem to have any provisions for communications
> between client and server, not to mention it is very documentation
centric
> not application centric.  (Or am I missing something?)

No, that's what it is meant to be...a method for discovering
documentation resources. Why would you want something application
centric? Or perhaps I missed something?


> > > 10) I haven't ever seen SGI's bookshelf thingy or heard anything
> > > about it. Maybe you could take a few screenshots for those like
> > > me who have no access to SGI/Irix??  Maybe after I see it I'll sing
> > > a different tune.
> >
> > Although a version of the system we provide does indeed scale
> > down to a local system, our "main" site can be accessed with
> > any old web browser from:
> >
> >    htp://techpubs.sgi.com
> >
> > You can home to our Linux collection of documents from this URL:
> >
> >    http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/init.cgi?coll=linux
>
> Kim, is this what you're talking about when you say bookshelf?  I guess
> I really don't care for this.  It's based too much on indexing
> alphabetically, and has zero categorization by subject type. Instead
> it's categorized by document type (man page, howto's, etc).

We've got both method of categorization...and it's very Yahoo-like.
Notice the links *below* the search box. You have End-User books, etc.
Different types of content categorization can be applied, we
decided to go with a paradigm we used on IRIX (Admin, End User,
Developer ...those being the various bookshelfs).

> Take the first entry in the Howto section for example "A mSQL and
> perl Web Server Mini HOWTO". This is horribly indexed under A IMHO.

Well, again, that's the straight (somewhat broken :-)) alpha index.
Categorization by topic can indeed be applied, per the various
"books" and "shelves".

regards,

-- 
Greg Ferguson     - s/w engr / mtlhd         | gferg@sgi.com
SGI Tech Pubs     - http://techpubs.sgi.com  | 410-785-2334 
Linux Doc Project - http://www.linuxdoc.org  |