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

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 9:34 PM, Stuart Jarvis <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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.

If anyone knows of such a module i'll be happy to deploy it on the Dot.

In terms of Wordpress, it is quite painful to maintain - we currently
want to remove the setup we have which supports a couple of sites
(none of which are high traffic).

>
>> 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

Thanks,
Ben

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