RE: Hosting of the cookbook

MJ Ray wrote:

> On 2004-04-23 19:24:27 +0100 Anton van Straaten
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>> The WebIt sources were ignored and forgotten about,
>>> but are basically easy to read and comprehend.
>> IMO, the wiki format is less cluttered and easier to deal
>> with for the purposes of actually writing and editing the
>> content of recipes.  For example, we no longer have to
>> wrap each paragraph in a (paragraph [...]) expression.
>
> You aren't contradicting me, so I assume you agree?

I agree that the WebIt sources are basically easy to read and comprehend. 
I was expanding on that point, because I find the wiki format easier to
read and comprehend than WebIt, due to the reduced markup.  My opinion is
that the WebIt format would be more of a barrier to authorship, which
matters more than its readability in its raw form.

> Yes, Twiki shares the previously mentioned problems, but maybe they're
> unavoidable for this task. Twiki is actually worse on this aspect,
> though: it's not even comprehensible without a sort of dictionary to
> hand. I would never have guessed trying --++-- for a heading, for
> example.

Without an example to work from, or a manual, you would never be able to
guess anything about WebIt, either.  I don't see that much difference.  If
you look at an existing recipe and press Edit, it shouldn't be hard to
connect the big recipe heading at the top to the ---++ preceding the
heading's text in the source.  You're right that it's not as self-evident
as "chapter" or "section", but I think that's a very minor point.

Besides, I'd like to have a page which gives contributors all the syntax
they need to know for the cookbook, with links to more detail if they're
interested.  The page TWiki.TWikiShorthand gives some idea of how brief
this could be.  The more complete TWiki.TextFormattingRules isn't very
hard to absorb, either.

>>> Little seems to be done to prevent the problem of
>>> forgetting about them from happening again,
>> I don't understand this concern.  Making the content available in a
>> wiki-like format is specifically intended to make it more accessible,
>> get more people interested, and make it much less likely that it be
>> forgotten about.  The activity so far is initial evidence of success
>> here.
>
> There is no evidence for this yet: it's simply too early.

The new cookbook instantly gained 4 new contributors, an increase of 200%.
:)  Seriously, I don't believe that's a coincidence, or merely reflective
of the fresh call for input.  I think it's because it's much easier to get
going with the new approach, and it's more rewarding to immediately be
able to see the resulting output, without having to set up WebIt on your
own machine.

> However, we
> still have no activity measures and rely on the people working on it
> to tell us when they no longer have time again, which still seems a
> bit unsafe. I suggest measuring and reporting activity to
> schematics-development at some reasonable interval, preferably
> automatically, so we can act if it says "Schematician edits: 0%" or
> whatever we think is a questionable level.

OK, now I understand what you had in mind related to one of the questions
you asked earlier, thanks.  I'm not sure if you're aware of the
WebStatistics topic which already provides a rudimentary capability along
these lines.

It shouldn't be difficult to produce a more tailored report.  Twiki has
access logs, which I'll see about making available via a URL (probably
restricted to Schematics editors).  However, to me this is a clear case
where we don't have a real need at the moment, and I see other priorities
as being more important.  This isn't a case where delaying action now will
cost more time in future.  I'm happy knowing we can do this in principle;
if someone else wants to work on reports like this, I'll give any
assistance they need, short of implementing the solution myself.

Anton



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