The replies on PWM in the avr-gcc list make me warm up an old
discussion: how can a selection of information from the avr-gcc and
avr-chat mailing lists be distilled into something with a less ephemeral
visibility and easier to access (search, sort) than an entry in an email
archive?
The most recent discussion a few months ago considered to have a wiki
(with the question whether existing wikis could be used) or to enhance
the Doxygen generated documentation - both suffering from the problem of
resources, and that it is difficult to make this kind of solution
survive due to the need of a sustained effort to keep them alive.
Personally, I use a half-way work-around (and I guess others do the same
thing): I simply collect email items that I think of possible future
interest in a local email folder. Could such a solution be generalised?
Just to provoke a discussion, here is the outline of an approach: (1)
create a mailbox with an archive that has public access; (2) send
messages that are worth-while keeping to that mailbox; (3) find an
understanding on what is "worth-while keeping" - for instance, messages
in which the original poster of a problem (if he does not, somebody
else) sums up the essential results; (4) there could be some guidelines
to respect, for instance to make sure that the subject line is clear and
useful as a search-key, and possibly add a link to the corresponding
thread in the archive; (5) this mailbox could be structured to have a
system of (sub-)folders, but there we might be back to the need for a
moderator.
Creating a mailbox and maintaining it should not be too difficult: when
somebody submits a problem and gets it solved (or ends up with a no-go
conclusion) he will be motivated to do the summing up - that is a
one-time action and does not require sustained effort. At least
primitive tools for searching a mailbox exist. That is far from perfect,
but much better than nothing.
What do you think?
I have seen messages with references like Re: AVR-chat Digest, Vol xxx,
issue yyy go by. Is that already something in this direction - what is
AVR-chat Digest?
Juergen
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