Re: A starting proposal for library.gnome.org

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

On 10/11/2003 1:13 PM, Curtis C. Hovey wrote:

> I've reviewed the content of developer, www, and foundation sites, and I
> put this proposal together for the libraries top level sections.
>
> Almost every section will be organized into editions, with an index page
> that will direct the user to the different editions.  What constitutes
> an edition is driven by the section's content.  The index page will
> emphasize the current edition, and the links to the current edition are
> static; current maps to the most recent edition.  I believe that in he
> case of old  editions like, API's, the page must indicate the content is
> obsolete, something in the style perhaps so that the content isn't
> revised.
>  
Out of interest, what is the rationale for putting all this content on a 
new website?  Appart from the press releases and case studies and 
foundation related documents, it sounds a lot like our existing 
developer.gnome.org site.  Would it really be easier for people to find 
the Foundation charter or the latest Gnome press release on a 
"miscelaneous documents" website than where they are now?

There are some good ideas in here that I agree with though.  Putting 
some version info into the URLs should help with the long term 
maintainability of the website.

Marking obsolete content as such sounds good (as opposed to removing it, 
or leaving it untouched).  A notice like this should be obvious so that 
people don't miss it, but not so annoying that it makes the document 
difficult to read (ie. no flashing "obsolete" watermark as a background 
image).

> Sections:
>
> API
> 	This API content is derived from source packages.
> 	Editions are represented as major.minor releases of the API.
>  
Currently the docs are versioned by Gnome platform version (sort of).  I 
suppose going by package version probably makes better sense (eg. GTK 
2.2 docs are applicable to the Gnome 2.2 and 2.4 dev platforms).

It would be good to have some pages linking to all the documentation for 
the "Gnome X.Y Development Platform".

> Programming guides 
> 	This section includes rules of programing, white papers, 
> 	and some of the existing features.  Some current guides 
> 	appear to be tutorials.  Obsolete guides, such as those that
> 	references old APIs, will be kept as an historical reference.
>  
Would versionning these guides according to Gnome platform version make 
sense?  If a new revision of a guide covers a different Gnome platform 
version, would you keep the old one?

> Programming tutorials & books
> 	This section contains introductions to the API, tutorials, 
> 	primers, and some archived features belong here.  Obsolete 
> 	tutorials, such as those that references old APIs, will be 
> 	kept as an historical reference.
> Policies
> 	This section publishes the current policies about accounts
> 	on the GNOME servers.  Older editions are not kept.
> Development FAQ
> 	Common questions and answers are kept in this section.  
> 	Outdated questions may be moved to the bottom of an FAQ
> 	section, or revised; irrelevant content will not be archived.
> Standards 
> 	Current and older GNOME standards are published in this section.
> 	Links to other sites like freedesktop, w3c, and omg will direct
> 	developers and business users to the open standards that GNOME
> 	supports.
> Case studies
> 	The content for this section does not exist.  Case studies are
> 	needed to illustrate the value of GNOME to developers and 
> 	business managers.
>  
I think these should really be on www.gnome.org and made quite 
prominent.  They should be one of the things we use to sell Gnome to people.

> Contributor interviews
> 	This section lists interviews with GNOME contributors from 
> 	latest to oldest.
> News
> 	This section lists the GNOME summaries from latest to oldest.
> 	If they grow too many for the page, they will be grouped by
> 	year.
> Foundation charter and bylaws
> 	GNOME organizational documents are kept in this section.  Older
> 	versions of documents are kept for historical reference.
>  
Wouldn't these fit better on foundation.gnome.org?

> Press releases
> 	Press releases are listed from latest to oldest.  If they
> 	grow to be too many for the page, the site may group them by 
> 	year.
>  
Is there any particular reason to move these off of www.gnome.org?  I 
think it would be good to incorporate the year into the URL of press 
releases too, btw.  It would make it more explicit whether a particular 
press release is news or not, and reduce the chances of name collisions 
(eg. from the name, it isn't clear whether 
www.g.o/press/releases/newcommitments.html is quite old).

> User and administrator guides
> 	This section offers guide for users and administrators, 
> 	organized by GNOME releases.
>  
Sounds good.


James.

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