RE: Getting started (going in circles)

Hi Michael,
 
Thanks for your insights!
 
Hmm, so it sounds like Xopus won't really be available to use, just that you can buy Xopus and make it work against Wyona?  Or will the binaries be available for free use?  This is makes it very difficult for contributors that might want to add to the project that don't have Xopus to test with.  But the real problem is avoiding licensing costs.  We are small and it is a community site that we are building.  Having thousands of dollars due for deployment costs is something that we have to very carefully consider, if we could do it at all.  We need to have Q42 be funded by the world bank!!! :)  Seriously though, I have no problem with the Xopus source remaining closed for the time being if I can get the community that I am dreaming of off the ground.  There won't be much in it for me either to get started.
 
As for documentation:  What if it was restructured into many small pages that were editable (probably even keeping the hierarchy that you have already defined)?  It would give people the idea that they *should* make changes and add information as they learn it.  Having a sidebar that can track where you are in a document and what other documents are available would be helpful, but requires extra work, and time on the project is hard right now.  Could Apache Forrest be used?  How much traction could Wyona get if we could get it into Forrest?  See below on my ideas on getting more people to contribute docs, I think Forrest might benefit, and I'll post a feeler there.
 
I see what you are talking about with the other email and goals for the site, I missed that one (my apologies).  As well as the formatting of the website.  I think these are very reasonable.  What I am envisioning is something like what (for instance) MySQL.org is doing with having documentation pages that can accept annotations, but leveraging Xopus to take it one step further so the unclear content can be edited and elaborated directly.  It seems that if it was "just that easy" more people would get involved and add their part to the docs.  I would!  Of course, there would have to be a workflow/approval process such that bad edits were not pushed up to the site, the abuse would skyrocket.
 
All I know about what Stefano was planning from http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg16700.html.  I also have been keeping an eye on http://www.beblogging.com/.  
 
I'll try again to get everything installed.  But is Xopus in the latest?  How can I activate it?
 
Thanks again!!
 
Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Wechner [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 4:52 AM
To: Brian Topping
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Wyonacms-users] Getting started (going in circles)


Dear Brian 

Thanks a lot for email. You are talking out of my heart. Please see my comments below. 


Brian Topping wrote: 


Hi all, 
I'm wondering what it takes to get started with Wyona.  I have to admit to having tried to get it going in a half-hearted attempt about five times now, and, well, I'm still without an operable instance on my machine.  Sure, it's booted, but now what do I do?!?  I've seen the Xopus demo, but that's running on their servers.  I want something that I can put a JPDA debugger against and look at code! 
The thing that keeps bringing me back to looking at Wyona is the integration with Cocoon.  And I am starting to like Xopus more than I like chocolate milk.  But these (with the exception of Cocoon and chocolate milk) seem to be as elusive as the woman I would like to meet. 


I know, it's still not really Open-Source. But believe me I am working on it. Kars (from Q42) and I will start integrating Xopus2.0 into Wyona within the next 
couple of days, but again just our interface will be open-sourced for the time being. 


What's more strange to me is I used to have a better understanding of Wyona than I do now.  If the docs have been growing, they have been getting less organized.  For instance, there are no documents called "getting started", "quickstart", etc. that are available from the Wyona home page.  There are no architectural documents with goofy block diagrams or UML.  If I wanted to apply Wyona to my own project, I would have to understand it through brute-force osmosis of what it is doing on the sample sites.  



I think the best way is start asking everything you want to know (on the mailing list) and you will be aswered and then start documenting the answers and then 
we will insert them into the documentation. (e.g. "getting started" etc). 



CMS is not rocket science, but it's not really very efficient for all of us to expend all this energy in parallel to evaluate it when we could be using that energy to extend it and make it better. 
What I have gathered is Wyona is a very simple concept that uses a very small amount of code to pull off really cool stuff.  I was reading an article by Stefano about the early days of Cocoon, it sounds similar.  What I ask is whether the success path of Cocoon could be emulated.  I believe some of this has to do with documenting a reason that people will want to contribute to the project.  Xopus makes things simply unbelievable.  That it is so hard to get ahold of really breaks my heart. 



We want to start documenting Wyona by using Wyona itself. Please see my last email on DocBook and DITA, etc. 


Documentation is not fun to generate.  I don't do it either.  But I am not trying to get momentum around an open source project, so I don't have to worry about it.  Wyona is, and I think the lack of elaboration on the vision and the architecture is really holding it back.  Given the demand for a robust XML CMS and the success of projects like MMBase, I can only imagine that the lack of shared vision is what is messing up our plans.  
Could Wyona.org be published with Wyona?  What will it take to bootstrap ourselves?  I see the power power of a CMS so content can be contributed by anonymous authors and approved by gatekeepers (editors).  With Xopus running, it would be a walk in the park to edit content.  We should have the best documentation of any site going since everyone becomes a contributor, right? 



I think what we need is two "very generic" publications, where people just have to change the layout! That would be a 

1) Discussion Forum Publication a la Slashdot 
2) A generic frame (I don`t mean HTML frame) publication, where the frame (head, navigation, foot) is always the "same" (global) and 
the body is XHTML (we could use it for wyona.org, answer to your question above) 

There are a lot of people who could apply these publications on their websites and all they have got to do is customizing the layout! 
But we need help on that, which means you have to get your hands dirty. 



Stefano and company met the other day to talk about CMS as well, I wonder what they came up with? 


When was that? 

Thanks 

Michael 



Sorry if this has very low signal-to-noise... 
Brian