Re: Please comment on Online XEmacs Manuals

APA> OK, Martin felt that way too when I asked this a while back. APA> For our users I would bet that latest stable would be more APA> useful. Stephen> FWIW, I tend to disagree. In particular this serves the Stephen> people _considering_ gamma very badly, no online docs for Stephen> the new features (widgets, netinstaller, etc). [NB, this Stephen> presumes only one set of manuals. There is no problem if Stephen> we have stable and beta.] Our marketing guys need to provide us with some user-base data, showing their distribution across stable, gamma, and beta. I assume stable will be the fat rabbit. Stephen> in places more accurately than the gamma manuals do. Stephen> They are also relatively likely to contain improvements Stephen> in explanations and stuff. APA> How about currently stable and beta, then? Stephen> I think that's probably sufficient. If we start feeling Stephen> the need for gamma docs, that means gamma has gone for Stephen> much too long. :-) ... but it can easily be added, if necessary. APA> I though of physically storing manuals under APA> Documentation/{21.1,21.4,21.5} and switching around symlinks APA> to them. Stephen> This works well for Stephen> stable -> 21.1 Stephen> gamma -> 21.4. Stephen> Now promote 21.4: Stephen> stable -> 21.4 Stephen> gamma -> there_currently_is_no_gamma_branch.html OK, we can write this document in no time. Stephen> And people who have stale 21.1 URLs can still access it Stephen> unless we remove the docs for diskspace reasons. But if Stephen> we have Stephen> beta -> 21.5 Stephen> And we release a gamma, say 22.0, we now want Stephen> gamma -> 22.0 Stephen> beta -> 22.1 Stephen> We must clone the tree at this point, because gamma and Stephen> beta will now diverge (rapidly, we hope :-). Note that Stephen> either the 21.5 URL dangles, or we _further_ clone a 21.5 Stephen> branch for historical purposes. We might actually like Stephen> to do That's where you lose me. I am assuming docs reside physically under their major.ninor directory. That leaves no questions open, right? Stephen> 21.5 -> 21.5_has_forked_into_22.0_gamma_and_22.1_beta.html. Huh? Stephen> True, all of the physical manipulations are basically the Stephen> same. However using 21.5 -> beta is better IMO because Stephen> it emphasizes the continuity of the trunk and is Stephen> conceptually cleaner. Note that we don't know what a What I don't like about this is that beta URLs have a built-in expiry date. A 21.1 doc URL will remain meaningful forever, even if we zap the files. People will always know what there are looking at (or are missing). Stephen> user means when he asks for "21.5" at this point in time. Stephen> He might mean "I've upgraded to gamma, give me 22.0" or Stephen> he might mean "I'm on the bleeding edge, 22.1". Yeah, that's why I would like to stick with the numbers and only provide the stable, gamma, beta links as entry points. People click beta and find that it's currently pointing to 21.5. Stephen> -- Stephen> Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp Stephen> University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Stephen> Don't ask how you can "do" free software business; Stephen> ask what your business can "do for" free software. -- Adrian Aichner mailto:adrian＠xemacs.org http://www.xemacs.org/