Topic: Contribs.org - Contribs and How-tos

[RonM]

Over on devinfo, some discussion occurred about putting together a how-to or an .iso or .tgz archive of all the various how-tos and contribs that are available for SME:

http://lists.contribs.org/mailman/public/devinfo/msg06999.html

A discussion like this would work better here.

So, would you like to see some central location for how-tos and contribs (or links to them)? Similar to what we have already, or something new? Some sort of .iso of a bunch of them (I remember ajkeane had a very popular forum thread about a SME build with a lot of contribs installed already)?

No doubt folks will want to feel they have a more solid vision of what will be considered appropriate before putting out a lot of time and effort, but we can certainly start discussing it - what we want, what we can do, etc..

Lycoris.org has Topics (which seem to be unavail right now), Tutorials, and Downloads which seem to be similar in spirit to our Contribs and How-tos, so they ought to fit right in!

%%% Edit %%%%%%%%%%%
The Topics link in the left navbar points to http://www.lycoris.org/topics.php and works fine.
The Topics "button" in the top nav bar points to http://www.lycoris.org/topic.php and fails.
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For any newcomers, I'll come back with a brief report on some of what has been done so far. For all our old regulars, please stick your oar in - what do you like? what gave you gas? Let everyone know!

[RonM]

A quick note about how contribs.org has been dealing with contribs and how-tos

There are several places where the community can find C&H:

Web Links -
Web interface (PHP?) to a database - http://no.longer.valid/mylinks/index.php
If the author or developer chooses, they can post a description and a link here. These submissions are moderated.
Instructions - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/Howto%20and%20contribs

How To Classification -
wiki markup - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/How-to%20Classification
We have made a navigable list of subjects, each with one or more links to pages with howtos or links to them, and downloads.
Each has links to a feedbak page, or, more recently, links to a forum thread.

The forums -
Web interface (PHP) to a database.
Many people post scripts or how-tos here - often in respose to a question.

The wiki -
wiki markup - List: http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/HowtoEN
A few folks have made a contribution directly in the wiki.
Instructions - http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/Howto%20and%20contribs

Contribs -
ModIndex of file share - http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/
Many developers post their software here and announce it on devinfo, especially for testing purposes.
There are many mirrors of similar structure and content all over the world - ibiblio, planetmirror, etc., many out-of-date.

Other web sites -
misc - http://sme.swerts-knudsen.dk , http://www.dungog.net/sme/, http://www.tech-geeks.org/index.php (just by way of example - there are many more)

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To try and bring this all into some sort of order, we have tried to position Web Links as the "central" spot, and made a list whaere one could post a link to contribs you find elsewhere ( http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/New%20Development%20Announcements )

While it could be said that, in the end, all we've done is add 5 more places to look for contributions , you have to admit that having so many contributions you can't keep track of them all is a great problem to have - beats the alternative!

[ngomes]

Hi Ron and all,

Just before going to bed my note on that: I think all howtos should be "never-finished" and "team-supported" documentation.

I mean by "never-finished" that one howto is always available for fixes, corrections, additional comments, etc. And by "team-supported" I mean all howtos should be supported by all of us.

That's why I think a wiki solution is the best way to achieve these goals.

From time to time some of us could generate PDF's for downloading and archiving purposes.

Cheers,
Nuno Gomes

[RonM]

Hi! Thanks for replying so quickly. For those goals, I couldn't agree more - and I think those were the goals of everyone involved.

never-finished - always available for fixes, corrections, additional comments, etc

team-supported - all howtos should be supported by all of us

These were exactly what we were trying to do. However, making this "work" in the real world involves some issues that using the wiki does not address well:

1) Whether hosted by contribs or not, almost all of the existing how-tos are in html markup. There are issues with converting them to wiki ourselves, and issues with asking the developers to do it. We've tried to workaround this by making a wiki page with an iframe to contain the original doc, but this approach has problems too: sites go offline, people move things around, or update a howto with a different name/path, etc. (of course they have every right). Some sites disallow "deep linking", so you have to navigate within the iframe to find the howto.

2) For feedback/updates/comments we originally included a link to a wiki page. Few people have used this. Ian recently made a change to link in a forum thread, and this has worked much better. However, both methods leave things "all over" - hard to find.

More to the point, all of this is basically just plain text, manually created/updated, etc. (Ian did make a php script to do the heavy lifting). It has few global features - no dbase, no URL health check, etc. We did it this way because it was what we could do ourselves with the tools we had ready to hand - we didn't have to wait for some one to  volunteer to host some how-to dbase, live with whatever limitations it has, etc.

This is getting long, and I need to go. There are better ways to do this, and it'd be great to kick some ideas around, see what we can do. I ran into one nice example today.

[ngomes]

Hi RonM,

Probably you are sleeping    

I agree that with the tools you had it is almost impossible to do better than you (and mbachmann, gzartman, wellsi, Muzo an all the others...) already did. On my opinion this is mainly due to the fact that xoops/phpwiki is unsuitable to this kind of task: it takes to much time, it is difficult to understand/navigate, it has a poor presentation, it lacks some control features, etc...

# Possible solutions for this problem:

1. Change the Contribs.org plattaform from Xoops to Drupal (http://www.drupal.org) or OpenACS (http://www.openacs.org). I am reading your minds now: this guy must be crazy. And yes, I am. But facts are simply the facts: both drupal and openacs communities have great CMS websites that are real team based oriented (bugs, projects, docs and so on), doc version controlling, good wikis/tools to develop documentation, etc, etc...  If it is impossible to operate that change on Contribs.org (now this is a task for Lycoris) we can always look at those sites and pick up some good ideas and develop some php code to Contribs.org (and no, I am not a programmer, just a sysadmin).

2. Change the phpwiki tool to something better inside Xoops. I pretty like the wiki Shad Lords (http://www.lordsfam.net) is using (http://wackowiki.com/WackoDownload/InEnglish). But there are a bunch of them out there.

Another problem is related to the fact that the information (docs, howtos, tutorials) is spread all over the net. As you said “they have every right”.

# Possible solution for this problem:

If there was a central repository for all kind of documentation on a wiki format, with an intuitive interface and simplicity all over, about 3000+ people could test the howtos and had their comments, changes and so on, and consequently all original authors would post their work primarily on Contribs.org in a matter of months. And we all (authors, users, admins, developers) would benefit from this wiki central repository.

# My final thoughts:

1. Regarding your comment “we didn't have to wait for some one to volunteer to host some how-to dbase, live with whatever limitations it has” I recently invested on a VPS (virtual private server) solution to host my website (and possible others) and I was thinking on build one for SME Server documentation on Drupal. Now I am setting up the server. If this can help on something please let me know.

2. I am Portuguese and I want to contribute within my limitations (I am neither a developer nor a Linux guru). And my spare time is not constant on a monthly basis. Anyway I was thinking on translating the SME Server web panels for Portuguese/Brazilian or translating some important howtos. There are also many French people on Contribs.org that would translate several technical docs (there are already a lot of them) to French if there was some “Translating Tool”. The bottom line is: the Contribs.org website should have a better wiki tool in the near future.

Cheers,

[RonM]

One example of "How To/Contribs" info

I was out on lycoris.org today, and there was a statement that crossover office supported MS Office 2003 and two that it didn't. I was curious which was true, and followed a link to the Codeweavers web site ( http://www.codeweavers.com/ ). I said all that to say this: I had never been to the site before (preferring vmware), so I was a completely blank, brand-new user.

Codeweavers/Wine has a problem of the same kind (providing information and help about a complex lot of functionality that isn't officially supported), of much greater scope (all Windows applications) that we do. The site is remarkable easy to use; they addressed the problem with style and substance.

It looks fairly new - many of the apps are still empty. They provide search capability (app ID, name, company), browse (name, category, company), a cpl "top 25" lists, and a "Recent Activity" list. It ought to be possible to add some global admin tools (activity monitoring, check for dead links, access control, etc.).

Each app has a "Details" tab (with Date, Category, Credits, and Rating info - we might add a link to a download), a "Screenshots" tab (where we might place or link to or embed a How-to), a "Forum" tab (with multiple threads), a "Known Issues" tab, and a "Tips and Tricks" tab. We should be able to add a view into all the Forum threads as part of a Support Forum, and allow people to place threads into a support forum that would also be displayed here (perhaps by choosing a Contrib name). A contrib developer ought to be able to create one of these by filling out a web form.

With all data stored in a dbase, we ought to be able to render key parts as text only, for bandwith-limited, or lynx users, etc. We also could sort contribs by SME version.

The result would be:
   There'd be only one way to post a contrib
   All of our contrib info would be avail at one spot, but developers could create their howtos as they wish.
   The community would be able to interact with this info directly, or via the Forums (or Forum => email), whatever is most convenient. Much of the existing postings are about contribs/howto issues.

An example of an entry with lots of info (Word 2000):
http://www.codeweavers.com/site/compatibility/browse/name?app_id=1

One of the empty entries (Groove is at v 3.0 now, BTW):
http://www.codeweavers.com/site/compatibility/browse/name?app_id=652

I'm not necessarily suggesting that we use this exact software or even the layout - for all I know it's proprietary, or extraordinarily resource-intensive or something. I just want to point out that this sort of thing is being done, and we can certainly aspire to this.

[RonM]

Hi Nuno - The present arrangement for the howtos is fine - I just think we can do even better.

I wonder if any of the portals are different enough from each other to justify the work of moving the content. Wouldn't we be simply trading one set of strengths/weaknesses for another? I'm unfamiliar with Drupal and OpenACS, though they look nice. Wouldn't we have to add both a web server and a dbase to run OpenACS on SME?

A somewhat more capable wiki would be nice. This one has one big advantage, though - we know it works

1) I don't know if Lycoris could use server space or not. Nice offer, though!

2) Translation/internationalization is great! I see there's some work on Italian happening, and the French work has been wonderful - probably the single biggest improvement in the last year IMO. If it can reach critical mass, support in a new language opens the biggest door for SME.

[ngomes]

Hi RonM,

Here are my considerations:

I wonder if any of the portals are different enough from each other to justify the work of moving the content. Wouldn't we be simply trading one set of strengths/weaknesses for another?

Yes definitely. But again we would be trading for something that's designed for team based collaboration everywhere which is NOT the case of Xoops. Since I know (and prefer) Drupal a little better let me give you some examples:

# Drupal Features: http://drupal.org/features
# Drupal 4.3.0 Screenshots: http://drupal.org/image/tid/16
# Forums: http://drupal.org/forum
# Active forum topics: http://drupal.org/tracker
# “Pure” forum topic: http://drupal.org/node/10782
# Book (manual) page forum topic: http://drupal.org/node/312
# Issue (bug or feature request) forum topic: http://drupal.org/node/10647
# Submit an issue: http://drupal.org/node/add/project_issue?project=drupal&category=feature
# Project announcement forum topic: http://drupal.org/project/drupal
# Member profile: http://drupal.org/user/227
# People who live in Germany: http://drupal.org/profile/country/Germany
# Download Center: http://drupal.org/project/releases
# Contribute Center: http://drupal.org/contribute
# Drupal Handbook (manual): http://drupal.org/handbook
# Drupal devel mailing list: http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-devel/
# Drupal support mailing list: http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-support/
# Drupal CVS mailing list: http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-cvs/
# Troubleshooting/FAQ Drupal installations: http://drupal.org/node/199
# Bug report / Tasks / Feature requests / Support requests Lists: http://drupal.org/project/issues?

The bottom line is: Drupal is definitely much better for Contribs.org than Xoops.

Wouldn't we have to add both a web server and a dbase to run OpenACS on SME?

Yes. PostgreeSQL for the dbase and AOLserver for the web server. NOT mainstream. But is the Contribs.org website running on top of SME? Anyway I think OpenACS is NOT a good choice for us although is a good system. But with Drupal we would be much better served than with Xoops (as I stated before).

Hope someone from the Lycoris/Contribs team would read this.

Cheers,

[gregswallow]

So, would you like to see some central location for how-tos and contribs (or links to them)? Similar to what we have already, or something new? Some sort of .iso of a bunch of them (I remember ajkeane had a very popular forum thread about a SME build with a lot of contribs installed already)?

Putting howto's and contribs into an archive seems to imply that they have all been perfected into final, stable versions.  I think it is fair to say that development of howtos and contribs is an ongoing process.  I think if Lycoris wants to adopt a contrib that they consider stable and compatible (say as part of the base version or as an approved addon) then they should be the only ones to create an archive of it.

I think is best to let people develop and share their contribs as they like, but maybe provide some suggestions as to what the best way would be.

As for testing contribs, I have started some discussion about an update script that easily installs some of the more popular contribs, and have now put it onto a wiki page so anyone can update it.  I think its a good way to get more people to test out your work, including testing compatability with other contribs... http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/Latest%20version%20of%20update%20scripts

Greg

[RonM]

Drupal does seem nice - kind of a project management collaboration portal. I'm going to try to remember this one.

Hi gregswallow - I saw your forum threads, and I thought it a potentially nice patch/update distribution method to add to our tool box - provided we can source from a mirror. Thanks!

I have one issue (I know it's a personal problem) - no doubt Linux has no trouble at all with this, but I'm an old Windows guy, and the thought of applying global update after global update, automatically, without so much as coming up for air in between, just makes me cringe inside - I'm way too chicken to try it :-).

I was thinking about maybe breaking them out by product, and maybe adding a test to see if all files downloaded, compare rpm #'s, etc., before actually running the install. Maybe someday, if I get time.