FW: [OSGeo-Edu] Subversion strategy questions

[Landon Blake]

-----Original Message-----
From: Landon Blake 
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 9:22 AM
To: 'Frank Warmerdam'
Subject: RE: [OSGeo-Edu] Subversion strategy questions

Frank Wammerdam wrote:

"On the whole DocBook issue - we tried using DocBook for a while for
MapServer docs and ended up abandoning it because installing and getting
to understand DocBook tools was too hard for many potential
contributors."

I also identified this as the major challenge when I looked at Docbook.
I was all full of steam for the format until I started reading about
what was necessary to convert the format in to PDF. It didn't look like
a process for the faint of heart.

At a minimum it looks like I would need to complete the following steps
to perform a conversion:

Install and learn how to use an XSLT Stylesheet Processor.
Import the Docbook DTD into the processor.
Import the conversion stylesheet into the processor.
Run the conversion in the processor.

This isn't exactly a one-click task, but perhaps it could be made into
one.

I wonder how one would control things like margin width and font style
when generating PDF documentation from Docbook. Is anyone familiar with
how this works in the conversion process?

Landon


-----Original Message-----
From: edu_discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:edu_discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Frank
Warmerdam
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 7:49 PM
To: Charlie Schweik
Cc: OSGeo-edu
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Edu] Subversion strategy questions

Charlie Schweik wrote:
> OUR QUESTIONS: 
> 
> 1) Before we test out Subversion -- Does anyone have any insight into
> whether we can use Subversion as a document distribution and search
> system for educational content?

Charlie,

Subversion is a source control system and does not include any search
capabilities.  Using a file system to web search engine like htDig
(http://www.htdig.org) on a "checked out" copy of all the docs on the
server might provide suitable search facilities.

Subversion is an excellent source and document version control system.
It doesn't really do that much more for you though (IMHO).

> 2) Any other ideas for a platform for distributing educational
content?
> I don't think the wiki will do it. Am I wrong? Any other alternatives?

I'm not clear on why you are unhappy with a wiki.  MediaWiki seems to
support reasonable search facilities.  You also mention that a
"wiki for document distribution will not scale".  I'm not sure what
you mean by that.  It can't support heavy request load?  I don't
see that as a big issue.

I am a bit dubious about wikis for big documents or documents that
include sophisticated graphics.  It can be done, but it might seem
clumsy.

On the whole DocBook issue - we tried using DocBook for a while for
MapServer
docs and ended up abandoning it because installing and getting to
understand
DocBook tools was too hard for many potential contributors.  It also
turned
out to be a clumsy format to work in.  Perhaps things have improved, or
we mapserverites were particularly dumb - but take that at least as a
mild
cautionary tale.  We ended up with documents written in html, and
restructured
text in plone though we aren't so thrilled with that either.  There is
some consideration being given to just moving to a Trac wiki (though
Trac
wiki is particular weak as a wiki in my opinion).

Good luck with your plans.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------
------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo,
http://osgeo.org

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