Re: [Fwd: Re: www.gtk.org]

[Jeff Waugh <jdub aphid net>]

<quote who="Matt McClanahan">

> This all looks good, though I've always wished Gnome would phase out the
> notion of a singular 'software list'.


On the other hand, I think this is crucial. I mentioned in my intro email
the idea of an apps list as a major foundation of the sites, using "project"
as a better term to distinguish that (given that a lot of the entries would
be libraries and whatnot).

Not only does this allow us to maintain the list, but resources for each
project. I have a quite a number of things that I'd like to see us offer to
Gnome developers, similar in nature (but more focussed) to SourceForge.

Developers should be able to maintain their own entries, and have a good
history of release dates, etc. On the 'user' side of things, the app list
can provide summary information for each app/library, links to countless
other resources, etc. Again, all maintained by the developer so as not to
create unnecessary work for the web developers.


> I'd be wary of merging the two, unless it was done in such a way that
> differentiating Gnome API's from GTK API's was done intuitively.  This is
> certainly possible, but it must be done with care, so that people who
> are interested in strictly GTK development don't feel abandoned.


The backend should be integrated, the front end should be specific. Ideally,
the 'sister sites' like GTK+ and Pango should offer a customised 'view' of
the information available.

Documentation would be a very different issue to the apps list, but
certainly linked from it. :)


> If the issue is linking different websites with more than one look & feel,
> I wonder if VA's attempt with the 'OSDN' header would be a starting point.
> Its implementation wasn't great; t doesn't look the same across sites, and
> some sites in its nav don't have the OSDN header (Namely Slashdot).  But
> it does provide a tie between the different VA-hosted sites.


Consider this: The Gnome site encapsulates Pango and GTK+ - they're
inextricably linked. When you visit the Gnome site, all these documents
should look familiar - GTK+ documentation rendered in a style similar to
everything else you see for consistency.

If you go to the GTK+ or Pango sites, you're getting a subset of the
information, but if the respecitve developers decide they'd like a different
look'n'feel, that's their call. I'm assuming that this probably won't
happen.


I'm up for centralising the information management (allowing for replication
of a standard datastore), and giving subsets for the various sites.

- Jeff


-- jdub aphid net ----------------------------- http://lazarus.aphid.net/ --

     "Boys will be boys, hackers will be hackers, geeks will be geeks,      
        and cyberpunks will always just be ravers with Macintoshes."
                        - Monkey Master, Crackmonkey