Re: [SITE] possible structure suggestion
Something I'd really love to see, is documentation to the extent that the php site has docs. And thier docs are user-annotatable, which is a really cool feature. -- Matt/ Details: FastNet Software Ltd - XML, Perl, Databases. Tagline: High Performance Web Solutions Web Sites: http://come.to/fastnet http://sergeant.org Available for Consultancy, Contracts and Training.
Re: [SITE] possible structure suggestion
At 11:05 10/02/2000 +0200, Stas Bekman wrote: Please decide whether you want to have the discussion at the mod_perl list or its sister advocacy list. I've added the advocacy list to CC, so at least the person who will search the advocacy archive in the future will find all the info about this important issue. Therefore I quote it in all completeness here. I'm moving it to modperl-advocacy now that I've found out that it exists. TomC, please don't tell me that I don't know how to quote. Thank you! lol :) Well that proves how good he is at getting a message echoed to the entire community. .Robin Earth is a beta site.
Re: [SITE] possible structure suggestion
Hi all, On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Stas Bekman wrote: text - this is much easier obviously, however I've often heard people say they thought text-navigation was easier with the navbar at the top and bottom of the page. I'd like to have opinions on this, but please let's avoid religion wars on this subject. I think what you wanted/need to write here is a lynx compatibility for the impared folks and those who prefer text mode browsing. For speed, I like to use Lynx but it's a pain with sites that have navbars at the *top*. Unless they have thought about it carefully they are often not navigable with Lynx. 73, Ged.
Re: [SITE] possible structure suggestion
Matt Sergeant wrote:
This would be cool. However, in at least a few cases, the PHP docs leave
something to be desired. I remember looking up the Oracle connect calls for
PHP online once (for 3.0), and having people hold a debate about how a
function really worked, because the docs were wrong, but no one really
knew what was right--one guy would say, "I think it really returns THIS,"
and another would respond with, "No, I think it returns THAT." Gives you a
nice warm and fuzzy feeling about quality of documentation... :)
Of course they could have just resolved it by looking at the source :)
--
Matt/
Yeah, given enough scrutiny and/or experimentation, none of these sorts
of problems are difficult to solve, specifically. But it takes time to
sort all these things out, which is why having good, accurate
documentation is a worthy goal. :) The page in question {I believe) is:
http://www.php.net/manual/function.ora-parse.php3
...if you're curious. :)
- Bill
Re: [SITE] possible structure suggestion
According to Matt Sergeant: This would be cool. However, in at least a few cases, the PHP docs leave something to be desired. I remember looking up the Oracle connect calls for PHP online once (for 3.0), and having people hold a debate about how a function really worked, because the docs were wrong, but no one really knew what was right--one guy would say, "I think it really returns THIS," and another would respond with, "No, I think it returns THAT." Gives you a nice warm and fuzzy feeling about quality of documentation... :) Of course they could have just resolved it by looking at the source :) But when the documentation and source disagree, chances are that both are wrong. Les Mikesell [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [SITE] possible structure suggestion
Please decide whether you want to have the discussion at the mod_perl list or its sister advocacy list. I've added the advocacy list to CC, so at least the person who will search the advocacy archive in the future will find all the info about this important issue. Therefore I quote it in all completeness here. TomC, please don't tell me that I don't know how to quote. Thank you! Hello fellow mod_perlians, I know I had promised to send this in by the end of December / early January, I am really late and sorry. I was caught in France by the french army for being an alleged deserteur, and they were *very* insistent on having me stay there. Anyway I'm out now :) Some time ago Matt Arnold and I started work with the aim of redesigning the perl.apache.org website. A draft of the proposed layout is sitting at http://modperl.knowscape.org/ . But adding graphic layout not being the primary goal we also wanted to change the site architecture so that things would be more easily found. One of the goals was also to make an "about" section targetted at people that are not developers but need be convinced that mod_perl is the way to go. I beleive that could help some of us in their daily jobs. I haven't had as much time as I wanted to work on this, but here is the latest version of the draft. It is by no means final, and any input is obviously very very welcome. And of course, we didn't write "In my/our humble opinion" before every element seeing that it might make the read a bit boring, but consider that it is there in thought. Also, I know that some work has been done on the site, but I haven't yet finished readin my mod_perl list mailbox (should be finished by tonight). I am in no way excluding things that have been said while I wasn't reading, I just haven't seen them yet :) The following document is also available at: http://modperl.knowscape.org/outline2209.txt #--# # I. Site Structure #--# Home Page = - brief introduction to mod_perl "What is mod_perl?", "More than CGI", links to more detailed introductory content. - news box (top n headlines and teasers) - short text explaining where to find what is in the site - quick "get started fast" link to Stas' guide section on that subject - small, concentrated Netcraft box heralding usage and growth . Apache Servers: x million / 63% . Modperl Powered: x hundred thousand / 5% . Modperl presence keeps growing at an incredible pace, . more - link to /about/netcraft/ News /news/?id=x or /news/x.html - script/handler shows full news article for article number x or static page pregenerated /news/search.html - quick way to search past news items Download /download/ - link to the mod_perl bundle - list of the latest CHANGES - requirements (Apache 1.3.xx, etc...) - links to install help documentation, including mod_perl help, the guide and the entire docset. /download/modules/ - about CPAN - info on Apache::* modules (from http://perl.apache.org/src/apache-modlist.html or the new version if it is a workable solution cf II. Tools) - link to /docs/modules/ documentation (it would be nice to centralise the docs for all the modules) About = (i.e. marketing info, introduction to features (the detailed developer info is kept in the doc section)) /about/ - links to the various pages in this section with descriptions of their content /about/usage/ - Netcraft usage info found at http://perl.apache.org/netcraft/ - extracts from the following: . customer list/testimonials, use a subset of info from http://perl.apache.org/tidbits.html, http://perl.apache.org/stories/, http://perl.apache.org/sites.html . info on high-profile sites gathered by Rex Staples /about/usage/customers/ - complete list of customers (to the best of our knowledge anyway) /about/usage/testimonials/ - complete list of customer testimonials and success stories /about/press/ - mod_perl in the news (i.e. press saying how cool mod_perl is) - use info from http://perl.apache.org/tidbits.html, search around for more (eg the Beanie Award) /about/performance/ - boast about speed, intro to the content that lives at http://www.chamas.com/hello_world.html or host the content directly (split among multiple pages ? It's a very long document), borrow ideas from the mySQL crash_me comparison database - should we use a crashme script too ? Does it make sense ? /about/advocacy/ - factoids to help persuade PHB's for mod_perl - perl versus everything else
Re: [SITE] possible structure suggestion
Here comes the followup according to the TomC's protocol :) On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, Robin Berjon wrote: Hello fellow mod_perlians, I know I had promised to send this in by the end of December / early January, I am really late and sorry. I was caught in France by the french army for being an alleged deserteur, and they were *very* insistent on having me stay there. Anyway I'm out now :) Robin, I thought it happens only in Israel :) I hope you are free now. I went free on this Sunday. Hooray!!! The following document is also available at: http://modperl.knowscape.org/outline2209.txt Great document! Seems great to me! - small, concentrated Netcraft box heralding usage and growth . Apache Servers: x million / 63% . Modperl Powered: x hundred thousand / 5% . Modperl presence keeps growing at an incredible pace, . more - link to /about/netcraft/ Won't it make the index.html overloaded? /docs/guide/ - Stas' guide from http://perl.apache.org/guide/ Note: there's a lot of great documentation out there. I don't know if we should do a separate section for the guide or not, or for all. The size of the guide seems to require it. Ged, I and probably Andrew will work on restructing the guide to improve the structure and navigatability. But this after Ged completes the review of the current chapters more or less, and me inserting the long list of items from my todo list. Note: should the guide match layout of the rest of the site ? Doing it shouldn't be a problem and it might be better to have a consistent layout but I'm totally unsure of this, and of course it is up to Stas to make the final decision on this point. The HTML of the guide being generated, I guess we can have as many layouts as we want/need. Everything is generated from the POD sources. I'll tweak the output generator as you will like, to make the look and feel consistent. BTW, you didn't mention a usage of CSS files to enforce the look and feel. - mention Stas' guide + Eric - book Please don't forget Eric, he works harder than me, but you cannot see that before the book gets published. The news item at the demo page doesn't mention his name. Thank you! Wrapper/converter for text and pod files Much of the user-contributed material comes in text or pod. To provide a look and feel consistent with the rest of the site, we will need to develop a script to "wrap" into a template for the site. The pod2html script is insufficient for this task but we can probably leverage earlier work by Stas (for the Guide) on such scripts as well as Pod::Parser. Yup, I've hacked the original pod2html, which I use in the guide. You can use it. Another code to use is the Site::Builder that I wrote for the Source Garden. It knows automatically generate htmls from .pod, .prepod (item lists + pod) and .txt -- see http://modperl.sourcegarden.org/safari/modperl/-/-/site_builder/ Module Database === A list of the names + download link + description/author/last_modified/ CPAN_status + link to the homepage for the module + synopsis. Part of this can be handled automatically by a cron script that would check CPAN on a regular basis (or the already existing database of search.cpan.org) and update the list using more or less the same method as for the news. This would hopefully help keep the modlist constantly up-to-date while reducing the maintenance to be done on it. Meanwhile, the maintenance can still be done by hand. That's something that Fresh:: modules should cope with when James completes them. They will serve the sourcegarden goal to make all the stuff generated from the DB. The intention is to remove all the static pages (from the perl.apache.org) that would benefit from the administration speedup. . sending PNG instead of GIF to user-agents that support them would be nice, but I haven't come up with a reliable way to do this yet (content-negotiation is probably insufficient) Be careful with PNG as they kicks off my older Netscape browser on linux! text - this is much easier obviously, however I've often heard people say they thought text-navigation was easier with the navbar at the top and bottom of the page. I'd like to have opinions on this, but please let's avoid religion wars on this subject. I think what you wanted/need to write here is a lynx compatibility for the impared folks and those who prefer text mode browsing. - Thanks Robin!!! ___ Stas Bekmanmailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.stason.org/stas Perl,CGI,Apache,Linux,Web,Java,PC http://www.stason.org/stas/TULARC perl.apache.orgmodperl.sourcegarden.org perlmonth.comperl.org single o- + single o-+ = singlesheaven
Re: [SITE] possible structure suggestion
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robin Berjon) wrote: Some time ago Matt Arnold and I started work with the aim of redesigning the perl.apache.org website. A draft of the proposed layout is sitting at http://modperl.knowscape.org/ . I'm glad to see this text: It's a common misunderstanding that mod_perl is just a CGI replacement for Perl scripts, this is only a small part implemented by the Apache::Registry module. because I've always been bothered by the following bit in the official docs: Without question, the most popular Apache/Perl module is Apache::Registry module. In general, I really like the look feel of what you've done. I think it's a very important component of getting mod_perl to be taken seriously by people who care about such things. And sometimes even *I* care about such things (yes, yes...). One problem: clicking on any of the navigation links (e.g. "solutions") launches me into an infinite loop, using Navigator 4.71 on a Mac. ------ Ken Williams Last Bastion of Euclidity [EMAIL PROTECTED]The Math Forum
Re: [SITE] possible structure suggestion
At 20:06 09/02/2000 -0600, Ken Williams wrote: I'm glad to see this text: It's a common misunderstanding that mod_perl is just a CGI replacement for Perl scripts, this is only a small part implemented by the Apache::Registry module. Well, thanks Ken but I'm afraid you're patting the wrong guy on the back :) That text is taken straight from the index page at perl.apache.org. In general, I really like the look feel of what you've done. Thanks :) I think it's a very important component of getting mod_perl to be taken seriously by people who care about such things. And sometimes even *I* care about such things (yes, yes...). That was the original idea. I don't care too much about the looks as long as it's legible, but the look of the site has sometimes been a hindrance to selling modperl-based solutions. I think it's one important aspect of Open Source projects that whatever can reasonably be done to help their users/contributors make a living off it should be done (using what tuits there are). One problem: clicking on any of the navigation links (e.g. "solutions") launches me into an infinite loop, using Navigator 4.71 on a Mac. Well it's expected not to work as that is the only page and the links are all bogus. Now when it comes to the infinite loops... Using all browsers I can I just get redirected to the first page... I'll look into my Apache configuration to see if anything's wrong (thanks). Btw, I posted this before having finished reading the ~1300 messages in my mod_perl box and nearly immediately after I arrived to the message indicating that such talk would be better directed to the new modperl-advocacy list. In the words of you know who, I "apologize for the inconvenience". .Robin Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
