Lampadas development plans

[David Merrill <david lupercalia net>]

I want to run some of my plans past you to see if you can live with
them...

Reading information about files from CVS I can handle in the first
release. I can show logs, history, commits, anything that can be
pulled from cvs. That's all very easy to do.

Eventually Lampadas will allow you to edit documents through the web,
almost like a Wiki but without the promiscuous editing of a Wiki,
although that will also be possible depending how you set your
permissions. It will include the WikiText format, so editing is as
easy as in a Wiki, but you can embed any DocBook tags right into the
text. So, writing DocBook becomes enormously simpler and easier.

Then, you will be able to commit your changes into the CVS tree, again
right through the web. This will also depend on how you configure
permissions. The alternative is to have an admin review changes before
committing them to the CVS tree.

However, all of this is going to be a challenge. I don't doubt that it
can be done, but I am not going to hold off on doing a 1.0 release to
wait for it. Even without being able to *write* to CVS, it will be a
powerful meta-data management system, much more powerful than the
DocTable and the LDPDB are. I suspect this is the most important thing
Gnome is looking for, right?

So, the plan is to work out with you and the LDP what features are not
yet included, and have them coded by the end of the month, so we can
freeze code and prepare for a 1.0 about a month later. I believe I
have all functionality the LDP requires already in place, so I'll be
putting my attention towards Gnome now.

This week I'll add the Gnome category system and Gnome apps list. When
it is ready for you to review, I'll let you know. Until then, you can
follow the progress on http://demo.lampadas.org as always.

Thank you for your feedback on Lampadas so far. I'm really looking
forward to giving you a system to make your lives easier and help make
Gnome documentation even better. It is wonderful to see the produce of
all the hard work of the past year getting so close to release.

Regards,

-- 
David C. Merrill                         http://www.lupercalia.net
Linux Documentation Project                   david lupercalia net
Lead Developer                                 http://www.tldp.org

To the cross roads I must go
To find a world unseen
Fear and wonder will I know,
And be a bridge between
		-- To the Crossroads, Starhawk