In article <e3adn8$2nbl$1@digitaldaemon.com>, charles says...
>
>> No offense to those running wiki4d, but it looks like an abandoned site from mid 1990s.
>
>I totally agree, its not the content , its prowiki;  it sucks.  I know thats offense to someone,  but compared with any other wiki it looks extremely lackluster.

Charles, have you looked at Wiki4D today? (I changed the template last night.)

http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?FrontPage


>Its built on perl ?  Trash it.  I can host a new site if someone can move over the content -- prowiki looks awful and is impossible to navigate.

Come on now. Other that maybe the hint of .cgi in the URL, how would the average person even know what it's written in? It's probably written in Perl because the earliest wikis were written in Perl. If this really matters to you, Helmut has mentioned that he's thought about porting it to D (I don't remember if he still plans to do that).

As to the navigation issue, that's probably my fault since I've created many of the pages and always end up putting random links everywhere. We probably need to rename a bunch of the pages or reorganize the content. But that's not ProWiki's fault.

jcc7

In article <e3ae4v$2o1t$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Bruno Medeiros says...
>
>Brad Roberts wrote:
>> 
>> The recent look/feel updates to wiki4d are good, in general change spurrs activity. :)
>> 
>> As a step to facilitate even more activity, I just spent an hour or so going through a good portion of the contents of this wiki and created a page to list stale content:
>> 
>>      http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?StalePages
>> 
>> In the process, I found this page, which is also a good place to concentrate some energy:
>> 
>>      http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?HelpDProgress
>> 
>> Additionally, I added a reference to the StalePages page on this HelpDProgress page.
>> 
>> I'll be adding to the list of staleness as well as addressing some of the pages that I feel suited to tackle, but a group effort is called for.
>> 
>> Later,
>> Brad
>
>Good idea. "Less is More" is especially true here, as removing stale information adds value to the wiki.

A good thing about how the wiki works is that after a page has been edited, the old content still exists in the "archive".

>In fact, it would be interesting to call for a collaborative work to clean some (or many) of the wiki parts. A more radical approach, but one which I would support, would be to Garbage Collect the whole thing. (meaning to blank all entries, and then re-enter (or re-edit) those who are still found to be significant). Perhaps a bit too radical?

I think that's too radical. It'd be better to start a new wiki (using MediaWiki of course since everyone seems to be in love with it). Maybe the "book" that Frank Benoit mentioned could be used (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:D). Since the Wiki4D content has a nice license, you could copy a page at a time to the new site. Once you put it on the new site, you could blank out the Wiki4D page with a link to the new page (so we remember where it went and people know where to update the content).

But I'm happy at Wiki4D, so don't expect me to help out with this project. I wouldn't stand in the way of a person or group systematically moving from Wiki4D to a new wiki (it's not like I have any authority in the matter anyway), but I don't think that's the best use of time. I think our time is better spent by improving up pages incrementally at Wiki4D.

>In any case, I would like to help clean up some of the parts related to language peeves and design issues.

Great!

>The [DONE] entries should be removed (except perhaps any very recent ones).

Sounds good. The content remains in the "archive", so we wouldn't really be loosing anything.

>Also, the introduction of the Bugzilla makes it redundant for the wiki to report on issues that are merely bugs.

Right. But people can still highlight there personal pet peeves in their namesake wiki entries if they want to.

>Thinking even further, the wiki could be used as a repository for summaries of the current "discussion state" of design features/peeves/issues. A standardized method and/or page for doing so would even be better. For instance a wiki page lists the common existing design issues, and for each one of those, another wiki entry exists listing a summary/abstract, background(optional), issue description, points and threads argued, community feedback (both negative and positive). Even if Walter doesn't pay attention to it (which is expected) it helps a bit to the community to know what is the current status, and the opinion of the rest of the community members.

There's already some material like this in the wiki, but it's not really "standardized". And there could be a lot more of it.

>I know thar there very standardized and very formalized processes for languages changes in some other languages, and someone with knowledge of these (I haven't) could contribute some good well-based ideas. We don't need nor should have anything that complicated though, just something simple, which is useful enough already.

>Opinions, comments, sugestions on what I said, please.

You have some good ideas.

jcc7

In article <e39mg7$18j9$1@digitaldaemon.com>, nick says...
>
>Walter Bright wrote:
>>> 4. A new/revampped web presence. The combination of www.digitalmars.com/d/ and www.dsource.org has worked well for us from the standpoint of functionality. However, I think to further the goals of a polished presence, we need a presence more along the lines of www.php.net.
>> 
>> I like the look of php.net.
>> 
>
>I threw together a very quick mockup in html/css and just copy pasted some content into that shell. It could looks tons better with more than 15 minutes worth of work:
>
>http://hcoop.net/~natamas/random/tabs.png

I have a couple of quick criticisms.

1. I like the big "D", but it takes up a lot of space (much screen real estate is wasted on the sides). Shrink it down to the size of the PHP logo at http://www.php.net/, and it'd be great.

2. I like the look of the tabs at the top, but I'm not sure how'd we'd get them to work with the template or what they'd say for Wiki4D. But perhaps the Digital Mars website could benefit from something like that, though.

Also, the color scheme seemed a little dark to me, but that's probably more of a statement about my personal taste than a criticism of what you've done.

jcc7

nick wrote:
>> What we need is a dprogramming.com marketing site, with examples,
>> tutorials, a beginniner package, and flashy stuff.
>
> I will donate an existing layout or make a new one.

Here's a mockup I've started, having been thinking much along the same lines as Kyle.  It's loosely based on www.mono-project.com  Hopefully it can help the discussion.

http://img114.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mockup5ey.jpg (forgive the imageshack hosting)

Obviously the front page needs a lot more content.  I was thinking that the "What is D?" section should have links to the following:

  - Comparison
  - Examples
  - FAQ
  - Docs
  - License

I also think there should be a small section before or after giving a quick explanation of what D is, why I should use it, maybe what platforms it works on, etc.

The "What's New" section might contain the latest releases from the changelog as well as any community announcements (maybe culled from d.announce).  Of course this would require someone to maintain the list :)

Finally I beg Walter's forgiveness for modifying the DigitalMars logo. I just think it looks better this way :)

-Dave

nick wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> 4. A new/revampped web presence. The combination of
>>> www.digitalmars.com/d/ and www.dsource.org has worked well for us from
>>> the standpoint of functionality. However, I think to further the goals
>>> of a polished presence, we need a presence more along the lines of
>>> www.php.net.
>> I like the look of php.net.
> 
> I threw together a very quick mockup in html/css and just copy pasted
> some content into that shell. It could looks tons better with more than
> 15 minutes worth of work:
> 
> http://hcoop.net/~natamas/random/tabs.png

Very slick.  It's amazing what a bit of formatting can do for overall appeal.


Sean

jcc7 wrote:
> 
> Also, the color scheme seemed a little dark to me, but that's probably more of a
> statement about my personal taste than a criticism of what you've done.

Personally, I prefer dark color schemes.  For example, one of my favorite websites is http://arstechnica.com and I use the toggle button in the upper right to view the "white on gray" scheme instead of the default.  I agree that such schemes tend to "pop" a bit less than brighter ones, but they also make for less eyestrain.  Ideally, a website should offer both as options as Ars Technica does.


Sean

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> Kyle Furlong wrote:
> 
>>> To this end, I propose the formation of an organization/committee, headed by Walter, to guide the process of creating this polished presence.
>>>
>>> Some things which this committee should consider are:
>>>
>>> 1. Unified std library which is 100% covered and stable.
>>>
>>> Aside: I am strongly biased to creating this library out of Ares + Mango. No offense Walter, but Sean and Kris' code is higher quality at this point.
>>
>> That's fine with me.
> 
> So, does this now mean that Phobos, GPhobos, and Ares should be merged ?
> 
> As in, splitting the Phobos library up - into the 3 Ares subcomponents:
> * the runtime library (phobos.lib)
> **  the DMD compiler runtime (dmdrt.lib)
> **  the DMD garbage collector (dmdgc.lib)
> **  the standard library (ares.lib)

I don't think they should be merged, as they all serve the same purpose.  GPhobos is a clone of Phobos but with GDC support added, while Ares is essentially Phobos refactored into three sub-libraries with "std" replaced by new code.

> I guess we have a few items to sort out then, like: linux/Unix/Posix,
> and what the module hierarchy should look like and other similar things.
> (but better support for posix and win32 headers would be a good change)
> 
> Or did you just mean it as in "it's OK that theirs is higher quality" ?

I think this is what Walter meant.  And frankly, I think Ares/Mango/etc still have a ways to go yet they are a feature complete replacement for Phobos.  For now, I think the status quo makes more sense.


Sean

In article <e3alr3$4sc$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Sean Kelly says...
>
>jcc7 wrote:
>> 
>> Also, the color scheme seemed a little dark to me, but that's probably more of a statement about my personal taste than a criticism of what you've done.
>
>Personally, I prefer dark color schemes.  For example, one of my favorite websites is http://arstechnica.com and I use the toggle button in the upper right to view the "white on gray" scheme instead of the default.  I agree that such schemes tend to "pop" a bit less than brighter ones, but they also make for less eyestrain.  Ideally, a website should offer both as options as Ars Technica does.

Providing multiple options is a good idea, but we can still argue about which should be the default. ;)

jcc7

Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>> 2. Formation of a GUI /team/ to pick and/or develop further a cross platform solution.
>> Aside: It must be a team. DWT is stagnant because Shawn doesnt have time, and no one else understands the code well enough to continue.

Shawn has done so much excellent work, can't someone pick up where he's left off?

> A logo is an important marketing and even recognition item, agreed. I just bring a small issue: does the logo necessarily has to an animal/mascot? I'm thinking it doesn't, any type of logo would do.

The mascot is just for fun. A logo could be anything.

A huge improvement yes.

ButWhatsWithAllTheCamelCaseing :P.

Charlie

"jcc7" <jcc7_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:e3ah77$2tr8$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> In article <e3adn8$2nbl$1@digitaldaemon.com>, charles says...
> >
> >> No offense to those running wiki4d, but it looks like an abandoned site from mid 1990s.
> >
> >I totally agree, its not the content , its prowiki;  it sucks.  I know
thats
> >offense to someone,  but compared with any other wiki it looks extremely lackluster.
>
> Charles, have you looked at Wiki4D today? (I changed the template last
night.)
>
> http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?FrontPage
>
>
> >Its built on perl ?  Trash it.  I can host a new site if someone can move over the content -- prowiki looks awful and is impossible to navigate.
>
> Come on now. Other that maybe the hint of .cgi in the URL, how would the
average
> person even know what it's written in? It's probably written in Perl
because the
> earliest wikis were written in Perl. If this really matters to you, Helmut
has
> mentioned that he's thought about porting it to D (I don't remember if he
still
> plans to do that).
>
> As to the navigation issue, that's probably my fault since I've created
many of
> the pages and always end up putting random links everywhere. We probably
need to
> rename a bunch of the pages or reorganize the content. But that's not
ProWiki's
> fault.
>
> jcc7