On Saturday, Oct 11, 2003, at 11:36 Europe/Rome, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
Le Samedi, 11 oct 2003, à 04:21 Europe/Zurich, David Crossley a écrit :
Tony Collen wrote:...We might need to get away from the "developer" vs "user" notion, because depending on how much about
Cocoon you already know, you might have to hack out a new generator (which would seem to imply
information in the developer section) while you are really a user.
+1 ... we have talked about that many times. Almost every user is a developer. Anyway "Trails" are better navigation method.
+1
I'm starting to think (and I think this resonates with what Tony was saying) that the physical structure of the docs should be flat, wiki-style, having all docs "files" (real files or generated) in a single directory, of very few directories like "reference", "documents" and maybe "technotes".
eheh, seems like the memes start to percolate. good.
I think the documents should have a *numerical* identifier that equates them with a URI.
http://cocoon.apache.org/cocoon/LO/3948494
where "LO" stands for "learning object".
We can then build all kinds of navigational structures, trails, multiple tables of contents, beginners/advanced, whatever (again picking up on wiki idea of a flat page structure with many navigation paths), but the path to a given document stays valid forever unless documents are removed.
Exactly. Right on.
With a numberical identifier, we can even keep the page if we change its title (this will ease refactoring and reduce the chance of future migration... btw, this is the approach used by DOI and DSpace... note that this is exactly the same concept I use for linotype, where news are identified by a unique incremental number)
Of course we forfeit compatibility with our existing docs URLs, but I think this is needed anyway to move forward.
Big +1, we have to cut the rope at some point.
This might also make our remodeling easier:
-move all existing docs to a small number of directories like above, "big bag of docs"
+1
-rename docs as needed to give them permanent names
yep
-create a very simple publishing system for now (Forrest probably?), until the new docs system moves forward
a first step could be the introduction of files that contain navigation structure. They could also be xslt processed to generate .htdocs file for mod_rewrite instructions so that we don't expose those URI directly but we wrap them with nicer-looking addresses.
[it's the static equivalent of a lookup]
-start building the navigations, trails, tables of contents incrementally
yes, the links can be refactored without
-if the docs format changes for the new doc management system, navigation definitions stay valid
true and in the future, we can still use those to seed a more dynamic approach.
I think we need to find a way to get started with this docs remodeling without having to wait too long on our improved doc management system - if an incremental path like above works it might help us get > started.
Thoughts?
big +1
-Bertrand
P.S. We need to find a name for this new doc management system - I'm low on ideas noew but maybe CDMS? Cocoon Documentation Management System?
-1 for acronyms.
-- Stefano.
