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> From: Charlie Brady [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Let's decide what is required/desired, and then see how LinkBase
> and some alternatives stack up against the requirements?
I agree; this certainly seems a prudent idea. Toward that end, here
are some things that seem necessary/desirable from my perspective:
Necessary:
* Room to store contributed RPMs and documentation. This one, as
such, is kind of a no-brainer, and we already have it.
* Search function. This would preferably search by name,
contributor, category(ies), and/or keyword. We don't have this now,
and as I see it, this is the biggest shortcoming of the existing
system.
* Incorporate material that isn't hosted at
e-smith.org/mitel.com/whatever. For a variety of reasons,
contributors may prefer to host their own material; for this project
to have maximum value, it should deal with that material as though it
were hosted locally.
Desirable:
* Self-maintaining. I, as a contributor, would be able to add a
HOWTO (or RPM) by myself. This would need some safeguards to avoid
abuse, but I think it would (1) make things more convenient for
contributors, (2) keep the listings more up-to-date, and (3) save
time on Mitel's end. This should allow adding links as well as
uploading files.
* Classification. Distinct from (but related to) searching, this
would categorize items and allow users to filter or browse by
category. Contributors should be able to assign multiple categories
to an item (ideally an arbitrary number of categories). Categories
would be fairly specific--at least as much so as the ones currently
used on the contrib HOWTO page. These could refer to what the item
does (anti-virus, administration, backup, etc.), level of development
(alpha, beta, stable), and/or applicable SME versions. It might be
better to keep these separate--that is, separate entries for
stability and applicable versions. Preferably this system would
allow multiple items to be indexed together (e.g., a HOWTO and the
RPMs it refers to).
For contributed RPMs, it seems that rpm2html, or something like it,
would be a big help. Unfortunately, it seems that development's been
cancelled on it, but it's probably pretty stable already. The RPM
should already contain a lot of the information people want
(particularly a description of what the thing is), and a tool like
this on Mitel's server would save the contributor from having to
duplicate that effort, or at least give initial values for some of
the blanks. The output from rpm2html could then be indexed like any
other html document.
The objective of classification points strongly (perhaps
inescapably) toward a database-driven system. Designing tables to
allow an arbitrary number of categories for any given item would be
pretty straightforward, but doing this without a database would be a
mess.
- --
Dan Brown, KE6MKS, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the
more enduring story rather than the story that is less enduring."
-- The Judgment of St. Colum Cille
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