Re: GTK+ Web site overhaul

[Martyn Russell <martyn imendio com>]

Tim Janik wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, Martyn Russell wrote:
> 
>> I spent some time looking into the structure of the gtk-web SVN module
>> to familiarise myself and formulate some questions, so before I continue:
> 
> rock, thanks for signiing up for the task at http://live.gnome.org/GtkTasks
> please coordinate with Tshepang who's also been doing some gtk-web
> shuffling
> recently.

:)

>> Cleanups:
>> =========
>> ÿÿ Do we need to reference the GTK+ 1.2 tutorial now even though we
>> publicly state we don't support GTK+ 1.2?
> 
> yes, some people are still running it, despite us not supporting the
> version. i'm also still linking to it when giving my standard replies
> to simple gtk questions.
> we don't need to prominently link to it at this point, but still have
> the content available and maybe linked to it from some "historic pre-2.0"
> page.

Yes, that makes sense, currently the pre-2.0 GTK+ stuff on the site is
too prominent for my liking.

>> ÿÿ The screen shots of GTK+ on BeOS are of v1.3 which is out of date
>> really, shouldn't this be removed?
> 
> maybe, but maybe a note that these are outdated would suffice?

Something else that dawned on me when reviewing the site content was
that we seem to be a bit disorganised when it comes to target platforms
that GTK+ runs on, it would be nice to have a more collective place
showing all platforms we support and then have spurs form that for pages
with specific details.

>> ÿÿ Some of the .html files have executable attributes set, is this
>> intentional?
> 
> no, that's bogus CVS attribs usually. nothing in the module needs to be
> executable.
> my homedir scripts on gtk.org contain an executable copy of
> gtk-web/install.sh
> so technically not even that file needs to be executable.
> (let me know in case you update that script and i need to update my copy.)

Good, that really bugs me :)

>> ÿÿ The faq/online_faq_fix script fixes up the .html files to remove the
>> header/footer .html files (site_top.html and site_bottom.html), we can
>> remove this if we restyle all the pages.
>> ÿÿ The faq/update_faq script operates on gtk-faq.sgml, but I can't find
>> that file anywhere? Anyone know where this is?
> 
> that file results from processing the sgml:
>   db2html -u gtk-faq.sgml

Ah, I see, it is in gtk+, i.e. not part of the gtk-web module. So this
requires some manual copying before running the script to create the
pages with docbook. I could probably write a quick script to prepare the
gtk-web file system so it downloads the latest version of that file
before running the docbook commands.

>> ÿÿ The gtk_app_{categories|index}.html files seem redundant and if they
>> are, so is the apps/ directory. Can this be removed?
> 
> note, the one thing that definitely must be preserved is:
>   http://www.gtk.org/api/2.6/
> (notice the PERMALINK-FOR-LSB file there). that subdir has to remain
> for LSB links to remain valid, everything else is theoretically changable.

OK thanks.

>> ÿÿ The beos/ pages are badly out of date, we should really update those,
>> especially things like the screen shots which make GTK+ look worse that
>> it really is.
> 
> maybe we should really have some outdated/historic/etc section then where
> we can move all the stuff that becoimes irrelevant or unmaintained after
> a while.

Hmm, well I have thought about this. For some things like the GTK+ 1.2
API and tutorials, I think it probably makes sense to include somewhere
on the site, but for some other historical things it makes no sense to
include them. We always have Subversion if people are interested in
digging up really old stuff, but generally it isn't useful to have pages
like gtk_app_index.html which list GAIM 0.10.0 :) and images which are
not used any longer.

>> ÿÿ The news/ directory doesn't seem to have updated since 2005. Can we
>> remove this?
> 
> dito.

This definitely isn't worth keeping in my opinion.

>> ÿÿ The images/freshmeat/ directory seems completely redundant now. Can we
>> remove this?
>> ÿÿ The images/pink/ directory seems completely redundant now. Can we
>> remove this?
> 
> dito. (move to historic/ what seems worthe keeping, remove everything else)

None of these files are worth keeping based on the research I did.

>> ÿÿ The translations page has broken links
>> (http://www.gtk.org/translations.html), namely the Spanish, Chinese and
>> Italian links.  Should we update this page? This page is not linked to
>> by any other, is it still required?
> 
> linking it from somewhere could be interesting, beast also does this on the
> website (albeit it also needs its links to be updated since last january).

I think the translations page is purely for tutorials that have been
translated from what I saw. We could do that quite nicely on the same
page we list tutorials.

>> ÿÿ Can we remove these unused or unlinked (no href) top level .html
>> files?
>>     ÿÿ setuid.html
>>     ÿÿ gtk_news.html
>>     ÿÿ gtk_news_top_10.html
>>     ÿÿ gtk_app_categories.html
>>     ÿÿ gtk_app_index.html
>>     ÿÿ announce.html
>>     ÿÿ books.html
>>     ÿÿ gtk+-1.2-NEWS.html
>>     ÿÿ glib-1.2-NEWS.html
>>     ÿÿ translations.html
> 
> i'd guess so, unless someone actually objects...
> have you used google to search for any external references to these
> links that indicate they could be worth keeping?
> e.g. see:
>   http://www.google.de/search?as_lq=www.gtk.org%2Fsetuid.html
> 
> that is, the setuid page *definitely* has to be kept. that is an ever
> recurring question and documents an important design decision.

No, I know that changing the site is likely to break some external
links, but unless they are absolutely necessary I think that is OK to
do, you have to at some point. For those that need to be kept we can
always tidy up the module and provide a link to the new location so
older locations still work.

The setuid.html file looks like it should be in the FAQ to be honest. I
would be inclined to put it there, create a link (i.e.
gtk.org/setuid.html --> <some new place in the FAQ>).

We could also update the source so it no longer points to the old
location and phase the link out over time.

>> ÿÿ Can we remove these unused scripts:
>>     ÿÿ freshmeat_update.sh
> 
> is it revivable? otherwise removing should be fine...

Technically anything is if it is in Subversion. We should just remove it
in my opinion.

>> Improvements:
>> =============
>> ÿÿ Can we update the look and feel here and give the site a fresh coat of
>> paint? I was thinking of something similar to other GNOME projects (e.g.
>> http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/). If we can, then we can
>> consider removing box_*.html in the top level directory and updating the
>> scripts that use them.
> 
> yerah, for anything review, you should be outting up  some example pages
> somewhere else first, so the community (gtk-devel-list readers, the p.g.o
> crowd) can comment first before changing looks.
> once moved to CSS, it'd be good to support multiple page styles though,
> that way we should be able to cope with stylistic disagrements more
> easily ;)

Of course, I will definitely do that.

I am thinking of doing this in 2 stages:

1. Remove all the unnecessary files and have a general clean up and
reorganise.
2. Restyle the site.

> again, thanks for your effort. it'll be nice to see some movement
> on gtk's webface ;)

:)

-- 
Regards,
Martyn