Let me clarify. I am in the business of writing the book. That is my job. I am in academia. That is how I justify my time on web2py.
You are in the business of writing online docs. These are separate projects. On Feb 4, 10:39 am, villas <villa...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Feb 3, 8:58 pm, mdipierro <mdipie...@cs.depaul.edu> wrote: > > > Denes is right. > > Hi Massimo, > Well, more specifically then: > > 1. Do you agree that it's a good idea to use the current book to make > an online book? If not, let's forget it. No. There is more marketing value in claiming there is a published book then online documentation (the latter is no guarantee of quality for potential corporate users of web2py). Anyway it is not an option because I have agreements with the publisher. You can use examples, code and screen-shots from the book not text, unless translated in a different language. > 2. Do you have an opinion on what form the online book should take? > e.g. Djanjo, Cakephp, Php.net manual with comments... No. I work on the published book. You decide the rest. > 3. Income. Will the online book project negatively affects the income > from the book. To make sure that this does not lead to a problem, I > propose that you make a suggestion as to how this may be compensated. > I suggest alternatives might include adsense, a subscription model, > and donations, etc for access to all the update notes. Of course, > even If the online book became the main place for the documentation to > be updated, you could still sell the paper version. This would be > something for you to decide / accept. This is not a problem. The income from the book is negligible and not the reason for having the book (the image is more important that the revenues). You should not worry about this. If the online docs get better than the book and nobody buys the book it is my problem, not yours, nor web2py's. > 4. What format should we use for the text? (Markdown, please?) This was discussed at length before and most people said reST so we integrated reST in wiki (which was originally markdown). This is not a technology issue (it is easy to do conversions). The issue is writing the text. > 5 .It is important for the domain to belong to Web2py/Massimo. May I > suggest book.web2py.com? I am happy to link a new page when it contains usable information, else it looks bad. We have done it already with the wiki, we have done it with web2pyslices. The think is I have seen this kind of project start many times before and never move much forward (except wiki and web2pyslices). I think it would be safer to extend what we have and then build another domain if necessary. Anyway, as a rule I am happy to link any initiative originating by users if it contains useful info. > 6. No one will take the online book project seriously unless we also > think about the roles we would need to fill. There are people in this > community with much greater project expertise than I, so please feel > free to dismiss the following. I am only making suggestions. e.g. > - Model Designer. It is crucial that the data is saved in the most > logical way for the future. This shouldn't be trusted to someone like > me! I vote for you (Massimo), if you have time. Part of my > reasoning is that you know how to design a workable versioning > system :-) > - Project Manager. Allocate tasks (and fire people!), supervise, > coordinate timeline. > - Programmers for controllers and views. Maybe split this into two: > Admin and Enduser. > - Html, CSS and JQuery effects (optional extra, can come later) > - Data Loaders to copy and paste the sections of the book. I think > I'd be good at this one, if the project manager would have me! > > Sorry to ask/make these specific questions/suggestions, but without > your support (Massimo), let's be realistic, a community effort to > produce and support the online book project probably isn't going to > happen. Honestly I have seen this effort start many times. People are really motivated but it takes more effort than you think. I know it because I did with the book. It was hard and took months of full time work even if I knew well what I was talking about. I strongly suggest that you start by improving the docstring by making rest compliant and then you generate the online docs from them. You will only need to add some overview pages and faq. Massimo -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "web2py-users" group. To post to this group, send email to web...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to web2py+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/web2py?hl=en.
