Re: GNOME and Lampadas

[Eric Baudais <baudais kkpsi org>]

First of all I'm not really comfortable talking about these plans which
directly affect the GDP privately.  Therefore I'm mailing the doc list
so other people can also comment.

On Thu, 2002-07-11 at 22:10, John Fleck wrote:
> David -
> I'm on vacation, so I'm not in a position to do anything 'til the
> weekend at the earliest, but I'll forward this to Eric.
> Cheers,
> John
> 
> On Wed, 2002-07-10 at 19:59, David Merrill wrote:
> > Greetings,
> > 
> > I want to begin work on GNOME support in Lampadas. I need for you to
> > help me get an environment set up for doing that. We will need someone
> > from the GNOME team to manage the actual GNOME data, because I can't
> > do that and develop as well. Consider it a pilot project, so we can
> > put up a demo of Lampadas running the GDP. I believe that right now
> > Lampadas is very near to having all of the features you want, and if
> > we start getting a GDP installation going now, I will be polishing
> > things up while you're getting the data together, and you can launch
> > officially at the time we go to beta, which is in only three weeks.

I'd be willing to manage the GNOME data.  I'll be trying to get some
space on one of the GNOME servers to set Lampadas up.  There are a
couple things I'll need to know first.  What exactly does Lampadas need
in terms of server requirements?  I know it needs an account in Apache,
but other than that what else does Lampadas need?  Are there any
requirements for Lampadas to work with the GNOME CVS server?  This
weekend I intend to read that developer documentation you pointed to in
your previous emails.

> > I am not a believer in spec everything out. I believe in incremental
> > development. This approach will make sure that the system is
> > everything you want it to be. If we wait until all is implemented, you
> > will not be as happy as you will with what is basically a
> > GDP-optimized system.
> >
> > Have you taken a look at the demo site? It has no real documents, but
> > has almost complete meta-data support, which is what you're looking
> > for anyway. If you can, help get some GDP people to give it a serious
> > review, so I know what they think of it and in what areas is falls
> > short of GDP needs.

First, I think we need to define what we want exactly from Lampadas. 
Since no one has commented on my goals for the Lampadas, except the goal
of working well with CVS from John, I'm going to assume those goals are
what the GDP really wants.

>From those goals I think we want a more specific categories.  I think
these categories should follow those which are being set by Eugene for
inclusion into Scrollkeeper.  Perhaps they could be expanded a bit more
if need be.  It would be nice if categories could be added.  The
categories for GNOME have changed multiple times and I doubt this recent
change will be the last.

The ISDN number isn't needed.  I don't think we will track the book's
ISDN.  There was once an offer to write a book for GNOME 1.4 by the GDP,
but that never materialized.  The vast majority of the GNOME
documentation is not in book form and we don't use the ISDN number for
any type of metadata.

What exactly is the difference between the Home URL, the URL, and the
document files?  I think the GDP needs the document files to define all
the files related to the specific documentation.  I think the GDP needs
a URL if the documentation is on the web.  The Home URL could be used
for the location of the document in CVS using LXR.  That is similar to
what the old GDP DocTable used to do.  I'm not sure this is the best
solution though.

One format for the document files which is very common in GNOME is
HTML.  It is the default format which we convert our source XML files
into.  This needs to be added.

What is a tickle date?

We need to have a bit more information about the license for each
document.  We need to know the version of the license and the holder of
the rights to the license.

We need to two descriptions of the document.  The first description is a
one line description and the other description is the abstract already
in Lampadas.

The main goal for tweaking the fields is to generate the OMF files
automatically from an entry in Lampadas.  This OMF file would be
included in the document files section of the document entry in
Lampadas.  The OMF file is used by Scrollkeeper to register the document
locally in the user's system.
 
> > BTW, the next big feature to be implemented will be the translation
> > synchronization and management feature. We want to eat our own
> > dogfood, and use it to manage translations of Lampadas strings. I
> > think this would help the GDP to coordinate translations effortlessly.

Yes, that would help us a lot.  Hopefully translators can see how much
of the document has been translated and the this feature can interact
with the CVS server so a translator only needs to commit the translation
to CVS and Lampadas would automatically update the translation status.

Eric Baudais