Robert Burrell Donkin wrote:
> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Robert Burrell Donkin
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 5:51 PM, Eric MacAdie <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Robert Burrell Donkin wrote:
>>>> On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Eric MacAdie <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> WRT documentation, I have posted a few pages about James on my site. Have
>>>>> a
>>>>> look at them and let me know if you think they might be helpful.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.MacAdie.net/opencms/opencms/sites/MacAdie.dot.Net/Java/James/index.html
>>>>>
>>>> yep :-)
>>>>
>>>> and you're (all) right that documentation is scattered around
>>>>
>>>> the current wiki has a low barrier to entry (which is good for
>>>> informal documention) but the content can't be used as official
>>>> documentation (apache lacks the required license). this limits the
>>>> usefulness as far as developing consistent user documentation goes.
>>>>
>>>> added content to the website means checking out the source and using
>>>> maven to build it. i try to encourage contributors to do this since
>>>> it's the first step towards becoming a committer. but as some folks on
>>>> this thread have noted, it is a little fiddly and has a relatively
>>>> high barrier to entry.
>>>>
>>>> then again, any contributors are going to need to jump through some
>>>> hoops to ensure that Apache has the required license to use their
>>>> contributions
>>>>
>>>> one option would be to set up a confluence instance (like
>>>> http://cwiki.apache.org/labs/clouds.html) for an official content -
>>>> user guide, perhaps. contributors would need to have a CLA on file
>>>> (this agreement grants apache the license required to distribute with
>>>> a release). the contents would be exported and included with future
>>>> releases.
>>>>
>>>> would anyone be interested in writing documentation on confluence?
>>>>
>>>> - robert
>>>>
>>> Sure, I would be interested in writing documentation on confluence.
>> great :-)
>>
>> if you haven't got a CLA on file for apache then the first step is to
>> do that  (see http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas)
>>
>> (i'll take a look at getting the confluence instance sorted out)
> 
> james has a confluence instance at http://cwiki.apache.org/JAMES/
> which looks to be used only for experimentation. i'd like to start
> using it to develop higher quality user centered documentation.
> 
> opinions?
> 
> objections?
> 
>>> I think a good place to start would be a step-by-step guide on getting
>>> involved with James. The URL for the "Get Involved" link on the James site
>>> is http://jakarta.apache.org/site/getinvolved.html, which redirects to
>>> http://www.apache.org/foundation/getinvolved.html. And maybe this is
>>> redundant, but a few pages/cheat sheets within James about svn and maven
>>> with a few basic commands to get started would be good. I have little
>>> experience with svn or maven, so reading that I have to go out and learn
>>> several other things just to do the one thing I want is a bit off-putting.
>>> But that is just me.
>> a cheat sheet sounds like a good idea
>>
>> and yes, the project level documentation could probably do with
>> revising (this thread is getting a little long and we're drifting OT
>> so i'll branch a new one)
> 
> perhaps it would be a good idea to simplify the menu
> 
> a good start would be consolidate the "Useful Information" and
> "Foundation" menu elements:
> 
>> Apache Software Foundation
>>    * Get Involved
>>    * FAQ
>>    * Sponsorship
>>    * Donations
>>    * Thanks
> 
> the japanese translation looks out of date so let's drop "Translation"
> 
> James has no unstable releases so let's drop that
> 
> perhaps Contributing should be renamed Contributor's Guide and have
> Standards content merged in
> 
> we don't seem to use the wiki much any more so maybe that needs some
> thinking about
> 
> in terms of content, the page probably works much better from the
> perspective of a developer looking for a library than a user. the
> product list is also outdated. may want to split products into
> Applications and Libraries menus on the left.
> 
> opinions?

+1

  Bernd

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]

Reply via email to