Mailing-List: contact forrest-dev-help@xml.apache.org; run by ezmlm
Message-ID: <3CFFC5B0.830B4C94@apache.org>
Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2002 22:27:28 +0200
From: Stefano Mazzocchi <stefano@apache.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: forrest-dev@xml.apache.org
Subject: Re: import of xml.apache.org main site into forrest
References: <OKEDLKGMIPDOCJHOEDEFMEEFDMAA.stevenn@outerthought.org>
 <3CFE607D.B2D64735@apache.org> <009301c20d47$c7e30be0$670004c0@PC103>
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Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:

> > I have the impression that you guys might be caught in the good old
> > "don't who till is ready" ego trap with your 'libre' effort. Release
> > early and often means also 'release when it barely does anything' so
> > that people can interact with you *before* you spend months developping
> > and find out that many things that you considered *very cool* are simply
> > not needed anymore.
> 
> Stefano, currently Forrest is using book.xml. Noone on this list AFAIK is
> waiting for the "libre" effort to proceed, and in fact as you've seen from
> the mails with root and infrastructure things are moving.

In reality, I was going to add metadata information to book.xml (for
pagination and print-friendly versions) but I stopped and asked because
I knew that a uber-generator would have blasted my effort.

So I asked and my concerns were right.
 
> > > > > Please review the result of this little transition exercise and post
> > > > > other issues you come across with.
> > > >
> > > > I'm offline so I don't have access (yet) to what you did, but I have a
> > > > few comments since I spent yesterday afternoon making myself
> > > > up-to-date
> > > > with Forrest.
> > > >
> > > > Things to note:
> > > >
> > > >  1) the navigation path on top of the page is static. I mean, when you
> > > > change page, the path doesn't change. We *must* fix this before making
> > > > Forrest go live.
> > >
> > > -0 - we can do this later on, too. This is another area which could be
> > > touched by upcoming book.xml alternatives/additions, so we need to be
> > > careful with this.
> >
> > Again, it's kind of hard to understand what to plan if we don't even
> > know what you guys are up to.
> 
> I guess Steven is the only one to know ;-)

Might not be the case, but the problem is that we don't know and we
can't influence its design until it might be hard to change.

NOTE: I do this to avoid Steven and his colleagues to waste time. I
would be simple for me to vote -1 to libre and keep going with what we
have, but that would be very rude and unrespectful of their contributed
effort.

I'm just proposing a way to avoid all this.

> What I know, is that maybe, in the future, someone will come up with a solid
> proposal to change book.xml to something that is better, but I don't count
> on it now.

Ok, that might be a sane position from where forrest stands today, but I
believe I'm a little more farsighted for possible community friction and
I hate to act when it's too late so I spoke up.

> > > >  3) there is no DTD for .xgump and this makes the changes and
> > > > toto DTDs
> > > > obsolete. Having a complete DTD for xgump and removing the obsoleted
> > > > DTDs is another showstopper.
> > >
> > > Honestly, we don't have much dependencies on Gump. Build & project
> > > automation is a very political area,  cfr. Nicola's remark. Some careful
> > > thinking will be required.
> >
> > I still don't understand why we need to incorporate changes and todos
> > into a project description file.
> >
> > Nicola, what's your thinking about this?
> 
> I agree. In fact the latest Centipede has them separated from the
> descriptor.

Cool.

> Ok, I guess it's time do describe here what are the descriptors centipede
> currently uses:
> http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/krysalis/krysalis-centipede/
> 
> (project descriptors)
>   module.xml (enhanced gump descriptor)
>   status.xml (developers, todos and changes)
> (build descriptors)
>   build.xml  (ant buildfile)
>   properties.xml (ant properties in xml)
>   layout.xml (description of the project dir structure)
> 
> The reason why I put developers, todos and changes is that they have a
> similar update frequency (and removing a todo with a change), and that the
> changes and todos need developers as references.

That's a good point.

> I would like to upgrade Forrest's centipede to use the latest descriptors
> and
> 1. upgrade Gump DTD to the compatible module.xml one
> 2. make the status.xml DTD part of the Forrest dtds, instead of changes and
> todo.
> 
> What do you think?

+1 on my side.

-- 
Stefano Mazzocchi      One must still have chaos in oneself to be
                          able to give birth to a dancing star.
<stefano@apache.org>                             Friedrich Nietzsche
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