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

On Saturday, April 12, 2014 08:25:42 AM Τάσος Κούτλας wrote:
> Jos,
> Please have a look at the demo site below and see if the functionality
> there is suitable for what you are talking about in terms of images and
> content editing. http://quicksketch.org/demos/image_resize_filter.

It sounds good. It provides capabilities that are not fun in Drupal.

I can't get it to work however. And then I looked at the module statistics, 
which are not promising...committers, last commit dates. With this background, 
I would be reluctant to use this in my sites (too busy, not technical enough). 
I'd only recommend it for the Dot if Ben or one of his colleagues gave the 
okay.
> 
> If so this functionality is easy to add using insert, ckeditor and some
> image cache presets.
> 
> Next, could you please tell us what kind of workflow would you rather have
> in terms of authoring articles. To have templates I think is overkill,
> taking into account that images for each article will be new. What we can
> easily have is an unpublished article sitting around which will serve as a
> copy/paste point. We can have several authors who can contribute to an
> article but cannot publish and a few editors who can push an article live.
> 
> How that sounds?
> 
> T

It sounds good. I use a similar method, relying on my memory of where cool 
things are published...example, one of the conf.kde.in stories (easy to 
remember) had a right-sized, large, centered image that didn't link to a 
larger image. Edit the story, grab the HTML, paste, change the image 
links...easy. It's a good idea.

So an easily identified and accessible article with code snippets might be 
nice. We already have a wiki page with HTML examples, which works pretty well 
for me. However, it doesn't have all the goodies, so sometimes we have to make 
up stuff.

We only have access to CSS within the individual story, so that can be a 
hassle. Example, an unordered list without bullet marks looks nice in some 
cases. Easily done with CSS, but not obvious and not very accessible.

To me the biggest hassle is images...as Jos writes. But the workflow isn't 
always the same.

We get images of all sizes. We get links to Flickr, where the download routine 
isn't obvious, which changes whenever Yahoo! wants, and the Creative Commons 
meta data isn't readily available. We get links to individuals' webpages. And 
obviously more.

We don't publish an image without knowing its licensing parameters. The Dot is 
CC-BY-3, the most permissive CC license. Some individuals want CC-BY-SA 
(attribute and share alike). If we aren't sure of the license, we contact the 
person who has rights. 

From the various sources, we need to get images that physically fit with the 
story. Most articles use float:right with a standard image size (I haven't 
memorized what it is, so I find an article and "inspect element".) Sometimes 
it might look nice to add float:left.

With group shots, the photo has to be big enough for the people to be somewhat 
recognizable with a link to a super-sized photo where individuals can be 
viewed more closely.

I don't know how Jos does this work. I use GIMP...resize, change resolution, 
save locally, make sure that the image is smaller than the maximum upload 
size. Tweak the jpg quality settings to get the best image that is less than 
the max size.

The images then need to be uploaded, and inserted into the story with the 
image link.

So...the image and photo tasks take a fair amount of work.

Otherwise the Dot workflow is pretty straightforward. A WYSIWYG editor would 
be okay if it didn't screw up the HTML. I don't find the HTML plaintext 
approach overly burdensome.

The above is about Dot stories in general.

Releases require more preparatory work and involvement from various people and 
groups who provide content. This is where it would be helpful to do some work 
at Akademy.

Carl

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