[LONG] Lampadas Status Update

[David Merrill <david lupercalia net>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

My apologies in advance for crossposting, but I want to reach all 
interested parties.

I haven't been very vocal lately about the status of the Lampadas Project, 
so I want to take a moment to bring you all up to date on what is 
happening. Despite the near silence on the Lampadas mailing list, I 
continue to work on Lampadas for a good 20-40 hours per week. Every 
portion of the system has been improved in ways small and large.

I have a Lampadas database set up on http://www.lampadas.org which should 
be considered the replacement for the old LDPDB at db.tldp.org. (Would 
our DNS administrator please update that for me? The IP address is 
66.92.150.169.

I do still intend to get Lampadas set up permanently on an iBiblio box 
when possible, but I need to work out the admin rights with them if I'm 
going to do that anytime soon. If (as I have heard from them before) they 
will not give me any admin rights, I am in a bit of a quandry, because 
Lampadas is just not stable enough to go without my ability to babysit it 
as necessary. I need the ability to get the Apache server reloaded 
(apachectl reload or /etc/init.d/apache reload). Maybe they will give me 
that ability? If not, maybe they will not take offense if I am writing 
them rather regularly to ask them to do the reload for me? If they don't 
mind handling that chore, I am ready to do an iBiblio install.

I *do* understand iBiblio's policy and I don't want to give the impression 
that I'm complaining. I'm very, very grateful for what iBiblio does for 
us. Lampadas is just not ready to run unattended, and I feel badly about 
asking the iBiblio staff to hold its hand while it gets the bugs shaken 
out. iBiblio folks, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts.

If we can't get Lampadas on an iBiblio server soon, I will just run my own 
database for the next few months until it seems very stable and I can 
quit babying it. As long as it's running on my PC, I will be backing up 
database contents daily to the iBiblio server, probably just as exported 
text files (gzipped) saved into my home directory. Then at least we'll be 
getting reliable backups on a regular basis.

The GDP is working on their Lampadas installation. The test installation 
is at http://lampadas.homeunix.net/home.en.html, but I'm not sure where 
the permanent home will be. I am making some changes to the system to 
suit their particular needs. Once the official Gnome site is publicly 
available, I will post the URL for all of you to look at.

Due to the GDP and LDPDB rollouts, after my next update the database 
structures will enter a freeze. We can add columns to tables judiciously, 
but we cannot remove columns or alter their type, because the ongoing 
installations need the ability to export and reload their data. This 
forces us to focus on code improvements by limiting our ability to add 
new features. Since there is quite a bit of code badly in need of cleanup 
and reorganization, I choose to look at this as an opportunity to focus 
on the quality of the existing code rather than as a limitation.

As well as bugfixing, I am completing much of the UI code, so that site 
administrators can publish and manage a complete site entirely through 
the Web interface. I am *not* doing a lot of work on the document 
publication system. Publication is a huge area of its own, and I have 
decided instead to focus on the meta-data management portion of the 
system, so that Gnome and the LDP will have a good tracking system to use 
right now. Additional features will be gravy, to come after the core 
functionality is to the point that I can say I'm proud of it. Right now, 
I can't really say that. Although I am happy overall with its state, it 
is just not finished or polished yet.

Now that the LDPDB has risen like the Phoenix in a new form, I am ready 
for all LDP members, including all translation projects, to begin 
maintaining and entering data into the database for publication. My plan 
is to get all translation projects to enter their document information 
into the database, so that http://www.lampadas.org serves all documents 
at en.tldp.org, br.tldp.org, es.tldp.org, and fr.tldp.org at a minimum. 
Of course I'll be happy to also include any other project who are ready 
to begin joining the International TLDP site.

If the volunteers at the non-English sites are ready to do this, we can 
use the next few months to get Lampadas ready for wider use, making sure 
we support all those languages and their files. We can begin migrating 
their documents into the TLDP CVS repository as well. Then, once Lampadas 
has reached an adequate level of maturity, we can begin publishing one, 
single international TLDP site, which serves documents from multiple 
translation projects. By joining together, we can share resources -- and 
Lampadas also gives you tools to help manage your translations. All 
translation projects are most cordially invited to take advantage of this 
opportunity to move the entire TLDP, English/Spanish/French/German/Korean 
and all the others, forward in a very significant way.

We FINALLY have the infrastructure in place to publish a fully 
international site easily. However, I cannot possibly do the 
infrastructure development and also enter and maintain the information in 
the database, so I am calling for a volunteer or volunteers to becme the 
Lampadas administrator and maintain the Lampadas website. I will give 
training on how this is done. It is not at all hard to maintain Lampadas, 
and it can all be done through the web interface. The only thing you need 
is a willingness to help and a commitment to do the work. If I get 
several volunteers, the workload will be light for each individual.

I also need volunteers to translate the Lampadas web pages themselves. 
I've completed the web interface for doing this, so it is quite easy to 
do. We have maintainers for German and French, and we have a volunteer 
for Polish but no Polish translation has yet been actually started. If 
you can help with any of these translations, or any additional 
translations, I want you! Write me privately or join lampadas en tldp org 
and let us know your interest, and we will get you off on the right foot.

Thank you all for your time and attention. Again, sorry for the long post, 
but there was a lot of news to report!

Regards,

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

Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers
believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE9geO9WC4Sq/MWsY0RAhE7AJ9kPUQgnT7DI1PvS9QaMot40UPxzwCggKcU
99lEi1AwMKL2Kl1OzXk14Nw=
=G2+L
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----