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Subject: Re: Current Roadmap
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From: J Aaron Farr <farra@apache.org>
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 13:38:20 +0800
In-Reply-To: <464DBDB5.7000401@ungoverned.org> (Richard S. Hall's message of
 "Fri\, 18 May 2007 10\:52\:37 -0400")
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"Richard S. Hall" <heavy@ungoverned.org> writes:

> Matthias Luebken wrote:
>> I suggest that you update the website felix.apache.org so that the
>> ongoing improvements are reflected on the website. If you don't look
>> into the Jira Issue Tracker, you don't have the impression that there
>> is much progress at Felix.
>
> Agreed.
>

I've mentioned more than once that I'd like to help on this front.
The website is real weakness for Felix, IMHO.  Here are my thoughts on
a good website:

 - Very organized, quickly addresses the audience and helps them find
   the rights spot (ie- who are you?  a developer of felix?  a user of
   a plugin?  a user of some other software that happens to use felix?
   interested in OSGI?...)

 - VERSIONED documentation.  That is, the documents for Felix 0.8, 0.9
   and 1.0 are all available and not erased.  This includes javadocs.

 - Available with the downloads and if possible, in a printer friendly
   format.

 - Include more "how to use the software" documents than "how it works
   internally" documents.  This means at least one decent tutorial.
   Screencasts are even better.

All of this is difficult, though possible, with a wiki.  I think
wiki's are great for community created documentation but they must be
well maintained, including pruning and re-organization.  A website
should have a flow to it, and wiki's often don't.

My personal preference is to author the documentation in some XML
format and reserve the wiki for FAQ entries, quick whiteboarding of
ideas, and soliciting community documentation.  Good articles from the
wiki can then be pulled into the main, static site.


That's my thoughts.  I'd like to contribute to Felix and the best way
I could do that right now is with the website, but I'd like some
feedback from the community before I either start hacking through the
wiki or writing up huge amounts of docbook or xdoc.

Thoughts?

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