[GRASS-dev] Re: CVS date&time on manuals page?

[Maciej Sieczka]

Hamish wrote:
> Maciej Sieczka wrote:
>> A timestamp on the very http://grass.itc.it/gdp/manuals.php site. This
>>  would inform what was CVS date and time when the docs on this site
>> were built. So the user can know what is the timestamp of this doc
>> version. This helps him to provide a better information in his doc bug
>> report - let's him verify if his local doc is newer or older, and
>> provides the CVS date&time for him to include in his bug report.

> why is the release version not sufficient? 6.0, 5.4, etc..

Because many people build from CVS, or use the CVS snapshots.

> for 6.3-cvs they are updated weekly(?)

I guess so. However, Markus happens to regenerate CVS shapshots
manually. Are the docs regenerated then too, Markus?

> so there could be a "generated
> $date$", but is that needed? each help page has its "last modified"
> timestamp already, which is more important than the date its header was
> connected.

I think the CVS timestamp is more important, than the "last modified"
timestamp:

Take a doc that was last modified one year ago. Say a user reports an
error for this doc, today; and you look into this bug a month later. If
there is a timestamp of the CVS version the bug was reported against,
you can say how fresh the bug is (a month). If there was the "last
modified" timestamp instead (ie. a year ago), your perception of how
actual the bug is would be biased.

Moreover, pretty important IMO: if we require the user to compare the
doc bug he found in his GRASS instalation, against the latest available
doc version, he is more likely not to report an outdated bug. Say he is
about to report a doc bug for his 2 months old GRASS 6.2 instalation,
but when he is filling the report, he is asked to provide the most
actuall doc's CVS timestamp he can check against, and he is informed he
can find a version few days old at grass.itc.it/gdp/manuals.php. Then
it shows that the doc bug has been solved recently - in the result a
redundant bug report is avoided and the user is better informed.

> i.e. description.html version is more important than g.module.html date.

Why?

Maciek