(god I hate Outlook)
-Original Message-
From: Steph [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 16 July 2004 03:18
To: DOC-WEB; DOC-WEB
Cc: Andrei
Subject: FW: [PHP-GTK] what is going on with gtk.php.net?
It occurs to me that this should've had a wider audience (Andrei, Goba,
phpdoc and docweb ppl).
-Original Message-
From: Steph [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 16 July 2004 02:44
To: Joel De Gan; Ben Ramsey
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [PHP-GTK] what is going on with gtk.php.net?
Seriously Joel, the way you write your best contribution would be tutorials.
Even one. Approaching it that way would at least save you the grief of
having to learn all the technologies you'd need to make direct manual
contributions (which, it has to be said, was also the main thought behind
the Wiki in the first place). Learning all that other stuff is a
time-sinker. If you enjoy writing, there are people around who can xml-ise
the material and make the commits, and it's ok to put your name on the
material in that situation. You won't be anonymous just because you don't
make the commit yourself.
I have to confess that this is the first time I've tried to look up
'connect' in the manual - and you're right, it doesn't work. The search
there runs on a simple PHP script and I guess I misjudged the percentage of
'like' that you'd need to get to retrieve that info from the db. I remember
writing it and being concerned chiefly not to return too much if people put
in something like 'set' or 'get' - 200+ returns on those queries wasn't
helpful either. So maybe it's time to do as php.net do and look into using
htdig. And maybe, just maybe, I don't have the time to do that.
This is one of many examples of why it's a bad idea to only have a handful
of people on any OSS project. There must be hundreds of people who use
PHP-GTK - even if only as an experiment - who know shitloads more than I do
about how to make the website more effective.
Post- PHP 5.0.0 release and pre- PHP-GTK 2 seems to me like a very good time
to speak up if web content, design, search mechanisms or data-gathering are
your thing. There are already at least three people that I know are good
PHP-GTK coders from their list comments and manual notes, and who have
offered to assist with the hard work of writing the manual content. It
doesn't mean there isn't room for more, and it certainly doesn't mean that's
the only area that needs attention.
XML/XSL experts would be hugely appreciated at this point in time. James
Moore ran up a basic documentation structure when PHP-GTK was first born,
and I hacked that structure later to make it work without producing ??? all
over the shop. He and I were both working from instinct; but I'm still,
even now, waiting for someone from the php-doc team to stop telling me our
structure's all wrong and start telling me what would be the correct way to
deal with documenting an OO tool via docbook xml. Whatever that solution
is, it needs to be adopted php.net-wide because we're hoping to switch all
php.net project documentation over to livedocs at some point in the near
future, so we need to have php.net-wide standards in this area. (Livedocs
is some scheme that Wez Furlong and friends dreamed up, chiefly with the
idea of making documentation more straightforward from the writing
perspective, but it kinda grew. It's in php.net CVS if anyone's
interested.) I've said repeatedly that I will make sure that php-gtk-doc
conforms with any OO documentation standard that the PHP Documentation Team
adopt. I still intend to do that. We can't have livedocs development on
the PHP-GTK project until that standard is decided. That doesn't mean there
haven't been attempts to adapt it, it just means we aren't working in the
same way at present - and nobody wants to see one set of rules for PHP/PECL,
another for PEAR and a third for PHP-GTK. So we need clear thinkers who
understand the concepts and are prepared to assist in creating a standard
for the whole of php.net's OO coverage, as much as we need people who are
able to dig into C code and figure out what a function should do (which is
not always the same thing as it does do, that's what bug reports are all
about).
There's a specific project aimed at all the stuff in that last paragraph
pertaining to XML. I'd be very glad to hear from anyone it makes sense to.
- Steph
> -Original Message-
> From: Joel De Gan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 15 July 2004 21:36
> To: Ben Ramsey
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [PHP-GTK] what is going on with gtk.php.net?
>
>
> On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:01:05 -0400, Ben Ramsey
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > So, it all boils down to this: manpower and, as Steph mentioned, time.
> > I'm willing to help with what little time I have, and if you have time
> > to complain about the site, then maybe you have time enough to help make
> > it better by contributing your ideas and manpower. j/k ;-)
>
> I wouldn't mind, though
