Re: Releases overwhelming us - need for improving the dot?

On Friday 11 April 2014 11:19:28 Jos Poortvliet wrote:
> On Friday 11 April 2014 20:34:08 Ben Cooksley wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 8:36 PM, Jos Poortvliet <[email protected]>
> > > A bunch of people, including Mario and myself and people from the
> > > release
> > > team of course are spending quite a bit of time on release work. There's
> > > a
> > > whole bunch of beta's and RC's atm, and with the releases splitting up,
> > > more work is coming, not less.

...

> > > So, we need to get together and work on this. That needs not only promo
> > > people but also one or more people able/willing to touch the code of the
> > > dot so we can automate and fix a few things. For one, people can submit
> > > articles - but that system does not work. It would be great if that
> > > would indeed result in something that can reasonably quickly be edited
> > > in shape. I think it would also help to have templates in place so we
> > > can more easily and quickly put together release announcements,
> > > especially the 'boring' ones like development- and bugfix releases.
> > 
> > Please clarify how the current system doesn't work - it is a touch
> > difficult to fix things without knowing how it is broken.
> 
> Broken is a big word perhaps - we only have a form where one can send emails
> to the dot editors. Ideally, people would be able to just create an article
> and submit it for review instead of sending a odt or txt file and pictures
> in an email and having us do all the markup & stuff.

(Aside: those emails come through with a link at the bottom: "The results of 
this submission may be viewed at:" which takes you to the submitted content on 
the Dot. You can then go to the edit tab and copy-paste that content to a new 
article (it's not ideal and maybe not the point you're making at all, but I've 
found it saves some time compared to starting from the email where, for 
example, there are extra line breaks inserted.)

Not being able to add attachments is a pain though for our submitters - they 
need to host pictures elsewhere and give a link or ask us for an email address 
to send them.

I wonder whether we are not fully exploring the possibilities here - we could 
for example let either any registered user or 'KDE contributors' (which role 
we, as editors, can manually assign people) create their own content directly 
(see [1]). However, I'm not sure whether we would be able to prevent them also 
publishing their own content (which, for scheduling and QA should be done only 
by editors)

> > In terms of the current code - the Dot is powered by Drupal 7 using
> > several off the shelf modules.
> > For numerous reasons, i'd suggest we continue to use off the shelf
> > modules where possible (eases maintainability, helps with security,
> > etc).
> 
> I don't disagree ;-)
> 
> BTW if it is possible to add a graphical editor, that'd be quite nice. I
> don't use them a lot but with some basics like adding images and esp tables
> it is often easier and quicker to be able to switch between a graphical
> editor and a direct html view.

Yep, for stuff like basic image editing, Wordpress (e.g.) is way ahead of the 
stuff we're using. It's a pain to have to take an image, make two different size 
versions, upload them separately and then manually insert the correct 
addresses to them in the src and href attributes - we often put in typos here 
too. My guess is, there must be a module to make this easier, but I don't know 
Drupal well.

> In any case, for me it is very much about having a conversation about what
> we could do to improve things and then doing it - be it adjusting or
> creating some scripts to make the changes needed for a release in KDE's svn
> easier or whatever... I'm not saying the system is broken, I'm saying it is
> becoming more work and at least Mario and myself can't sustain the amount
> of work we put in over the last months.
> 
> > > Mario proposed to get together at Randa for a Dot hackaton. Another
> > > option
> > > would be Akademy. I personally can't make it to Randa but I will be at
> > > Akademy.
> > > 
> > > Please comment on these three questions:
> > > * Do you agree a dot hackaton could help and are you willing to help
> > > out?

Yes

> > > * Are there 'techies' willing/able to help out on the dot code?

As Ben says we'd be better sticking to upstream modules - what we probably 
need is someone with more expertise about those it identify things that might 
be useful.

> > > * What option (Randa or Akademy) would work for you?

More likely Akademy - I could also work on this remotely.

Regards,
Stu


[1] http://dot.kde.org/admin/people/permissions (will only be accessible to 
people with admin accounts, I guess)

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