Re: Future website infrastructure? Internationalization considerations...

[Christopher Warner <cwarner kernelcode com>]

> > Conclusion
> > 
> > Instead of migrating back and forth between various systems, maybe we
> > should look into keeping the current architecture, writing our own
> > translation system, and stick with static pages. The translation could
> > be po-based, or custom language-specific static pages [or templates]
> > could be created and committed (similar to webwmr).
> Personally, I would not mind completely abandoning the Plone attempt
> (it's not like we'd lose a lot of momentum or anything), but this is not
> my decision to make.  I definitely support the idea of static pages,
> though.
> 
> As a side note, python.org has a really slick system
> for generating its pages (no translations), and fedoraproject.org's
> system is based off of some code from there, with additions to use the
> Genshi templating engine (and handle PO-based translations), although
> we are still working through some issues with how we should handle
> partially translated pages, etc.
> 
> Thanks,
> Ricky

I'm not quite sure how static web pages are any different. As people
begin to want things that are more dynamic. The amount of effort that
goes into maintaining a system that isn't properly content managed is a
serious problem. Personally, I'm currently swamped with work so I
haven't been able to finish off the Plone3 stuff; it's maybe 2-4 hours
of work at the most; hopefully I can get to it this weekend.

However the main issue appears to be making a proper call for help. It
seems to me that there needs to be a whole lot more people working on
this and few people will join if they don't know an effort is under way.
I found out myself because I happen to read the Gnome planet every now
and then. Before that point I really had no idea there was an effort
underway. Most people who would be interested in such a project will not
be reading Gnome Planet.

Also, we should look to comparing apples to apples in terms of content
management. All sites and/or content aren't created equal, the Debian
project doesn't have much dynamic content and sadly it's not organized
in any professional manner. Whoever are the persons doing the Ubuntu
site seem to be using Plone/Zope all over the place; those are potential
contributors. In-fact, it appears launchpad.net is completely
Zope/Plone.

Finally, after this Plone 3 migration is complete. We should begin
planning on how to advocate for more help; documenting what we currently
have and how to make it buildable by all. One person, shouldn't be able
to write this on their own without proper doc otherwise we have
situations like this where it takes someone else that much longer to
figure out what's going on. Basically it just really needs to be an
opensource project in the way it functions; from tip to tail. Otherwise
this will keep happening; it doesn't matter what application server or
language.

-- 
Christopher Warner
cwarner kernelcode com