"Bill Page" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: | Gaby, | | I am glad to receive your comments about the Axiom Wike site. | Please forgive me if some of my replies sound overly defensive. | I admit I have a biased view - but that is what makes it even | more important that other people comment about this stuff... | | On July 31, 2006 9:33 PM you wrote: | > | > I find the front page of Axiom quite "visually heavy" -- and | > many times I miss there the information I'm looking for. | > | | Could you give an example of information that you were looking | for but did not find? That sort of observation would be a big | help.
For example, I was looking for research papers related to Axiom. I knew they were buried deeply somewhere in the hierarchical pages. see the message I sent to axiom-mail. | > So, I took a look at few free software or open source | > computer algebra systems, to see what other people are up to. | > | > http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ | > http://yacas.sourceforge.net/ | > http://www.singular.uni-kl.de/ | > http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~gap/ | > | > All of them appears to me to be quite simple -- and I like that | > simplicity. Especially that of Maxima. It takes very little | > time to display -- compared to Axiom's. | > | | When I look at | | http://maxima.sourceforge.net | | My first reaction is: Hmmm, that doesn't look so different than the | Axiom Wiki FrontPage... The time to display seems quite similar over | a high speed connection and a reasonably fast system (AMD 3500+). | | Differences I noticed: | | 1) Maxima uses just a left side-bar but Axiom Wiki currently uses | both left and right side-bars, but just a left side-bar | navigation bar on all other pages. | | 2) The Axiom Wiki FrontPage has more graphics including an example | Axiom output graphic. That, from my perspective, contributes to the "visual load". | 3) The Maxima web site is not a wiki. I understand that. I'm not sure I see the benefits of having the frontpage being a wiki -- but that is a minor point I guess. | 4) The Maxima web site has no search function. that is a minus for them, and a plus for us :-) | I don't find anything that makes the Maxima page seem simpler or | that gives me the impression that information is more readily | accessible. What am I missing? | | When I looked at: | | http://yacas.sourceforge.net | | I thought: | | 1) Yacas FrontPage doesn't say much and has only a minimal set | of links (no side-bars). minimal is beautiful :-) As I said, my preference goes to maxima's style. Yacas' is at one end of the spectrum. I find that Axiom's holds the other end. | 2) Yacas uses a fixed left side-bar on other pages. | | 3) Not a wiki. | | 4) No search. | | When I look at: | | http://www.singular.uni-kl.de/ | | my reaction is: | | 1) Looks a lot like Axiom Wiki. but much simpler; visually. It has direct links to what I would call the essential stuff. | 2) Has search. | | 3) Has both left and right side-bars. | | 4) Not a wiki. Why is having the front-page as wiki a plus? For all I know, only a handful of people can actually modify that page. For other pages, due to irritating spams, the system has made it complicated for good citizens to contribute changes. I don't see a difference between that and maintaining the website files as part of the SVN or CVS repository. The latter seems simpler to me -- but I'm not proposing it. Just observing. [...] | > Important to me is that the front-page must send the message that | > this is related to research. Yes, we have links to workshops and | > all that. But, most importantly, links to research papers related | > to Axiom must be clearly and unambiguously linked from there -- | | Are you aware of the Axiom bibliography on the Axiom Portal? | | http://portal.axiom-developer.org/refs Yes, I do. | Maybe this deserves a link on the Axiom Wiki FrontPage? This is precisely what I suggested in the message I sent (yesterday I believe) to axiom-mail. | > I sent a message to axiom-mail to that effect but for some reasons | > it never shows up :-( | | I did not see any posting to axiom-mail. In fact I haven't seen | any real postings to axiom-mail for some time - only spam (about | 10 to 20 spam message per day). I wonder if this list is working | properly? Most people seem to prefer the axiom-devel list. Maybe | we have too many lists? I don't think we have too many lists; we're just misusing axiom-devel :-) | > My suggestion would be to simplify the "visual load" of the | > front-page. I know that sounds a bit unhelpful but it is a | > start of suggestion :-) | | I am not clear on what you mean by "visual load". Are you | referring to the layout? The color scheme? yes, layout. I think the color is OK. | > People should be able to find the exciting/appealing things | > about Axiom from its front-page. We should not require them | > to "dig through". | > | | I agree. | | Can you give an example of something that is exciting and/or | appealing about Axiom that is not found on the FrontPage? | | What constituents "dig through" to you? For example, I know that if I log into the portal I can find the links to the articles; but I don't know how many clicks it takes to find it from the frontpage. Yesterday, I was looking for something in the documentation of the silver branch and realized there was a page for "development" (or something like that) that is a hierarchical parent of the silver stuff. I don't propose to put all links ono the frontpage though :-) | Do you mean just | that they don't find the information on the FrontPage? | How many clicks to finding the right information do you | think is reasonable? at most two. | > To my mind the description of Axiom should mention | > application to engineering, computer science -- not just | > Physics or Mathematics. | > | | I agree. I really would like to be able to list examples | of all of these. Did you see any mention of physics on the | FrontPage? I saw it somewhere (that is from yesterday memory)... It turns out that I read it from Axiom's SF page. Sorry for that. Actually, I'm interested in a publically accessible list of applications of computer algebra in fields other than maths. Do you happen to know one? | I would claim that computer science is clearly | implied by the contents of the FrontPage even if not | explicitly named. we should be explicit about it -- it is part of "they should not dig through." :-) -- Gaby _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer