[OSGeo-Edu] FreeGIS Book

[Jo Walsh]

dear Puneet, all,

On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 09:00:50AM -0500, P Kishor wrote:
> >Alternatively set up another Drupal, I really like
> >to OSGeo prototype: http://frot.org/osgeo/portal/de/node/49
> 
> I saw this referenced in Jo's email, and it concerned me. I am all for
> things being easier, however, I am also for things being consistent.
> If mediawiki is really less appropriate than drupal, then it would be
> nice to standardize on just one platform all around. Forking is really
> a disintegrating force. Yes, osgeo, as is, is a bit confusing, but
> perhaps the solution to that is to make it less confusing instead of
> starting another version of it altogether.

lol... the prototype 'community portal' is an effort to make osgeo
appear *less* confusing, not more, so i am both appreciating your reaction,
and crying inside with heartfelt penitence for dropping the URL on you
without laying more carefully the groundwork of explanation.

https://webcommittee.osgeo.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=430
explains some of the background to this. With WebCom's blessing i
started to experiment with a drupal-based site that could provide a
lot of the communications tools that our current CollabNet hosted site
is missing - content creation workflow, RSS feed input and output,
particularly member profiles and locations. Tyler got caught up in the
idea and started putting a lot of productive energy into it, and
suddenly people are starting to take this seriously and asking when
OSGeo might consider using this instead of what we have at www.osgeo.org
That would be a great outcome. Next week Tyler and i will get the
prototype rehosted, get help improving the CSS/layout and get
community.osgeo.org DNS pointed at it; it should make more sense then.

I *definitely* do not see this replacing the OSGeo wiki in any way. I
like the wiki-sandbox environment, mediawiki works well. it could look
nicer - less 'unofficial'. I definitely do not want to push solutions
or worldviews on anyone; if the mediawiki environment works well for
book production, then use it. It's much more important to me that
people are encouraged and facilitated to produce *something* than that
they use any production environment or have to argue about it.

The book production project is standalone; it's really up to those
people working on it to decide. (I'd love to help with edit work in
the future; right now i'm way overcommitted :/). FWIW Tyler did some
experimenting with the drupal book module in the Prototype. It doesn't
integrate with the translation module already being used there. My own
judgement call would be "go with what you're most comfortable with
now; let's not make the world more confusing; if your needs change
then one of the osgeo systems wonking borg will help answer them."

i hope this helps?


jo