On Feb 24, 2009, at 1:24 AM, Kyle Pearson wrote: > Yes, yes -- > > that was precisely what i meant by "coordination": how should i go > about implementing my ideas, content, and suggestions for the > site? Many of the questions and such that i have are very easily > answered, but not easily tracked down (if included at alll) in the > website itself. > > Obviously, help pages that i create can go on the Wiki. But how > should i go about easing things on the website, or the sourceforge > pages?
Kyle, The more you or anyone progresses from discussion and questions to actual contributions, the chatter should migrate over to the brlcad- devel mailing list or to the IRC channel but the general process is even less stringent than obtaining commit access though still handled similarly. You can make a "patch" for the first change or two, for which the website equivalent would be editing the html or basically stating in detail what change you have in mind, or maybe a mock up if it's cosmetic or organizational, etc. There isn't a designated website maintainer so if you want to work on it, so we can just have some open discussions (on brlcad-devel or irc) about those changes and go from there to get you set up. > I believe the "fbserv" command was included as part of the > binaries' introductory html help files, as part of the tutorial to > "make a mug". I went through the tutorial step-by-step, with both > the gui and the console -- three times or more with each, > carefully reviewing whatever output i got, each time more carefully > than the last -- but i always got the same result. :-( Ahh, .. *that* tutorial. It's a perfectly fine tutorial, but hasn't been maintained and reviewed nearly as well as the mged tutorial series was. It was also written during days when SGI workstations were the most dominant platform, so some of the commands are tailored to that environment (e.g. /dev/sgip) that aren't relevant elsewhere. That could be why you couldn't get anything to render. It could also simply be out-of-date as commands have changed in subtle ways over the years and the tutorial possibly doesn't reflect all of those changes. One of the big efforts that has been on-going for many months now is an effort by one of the devs (Cliff Yapp) to convert our documentation to the Docbook/XML format so that it can be more easily consolidated, revision controlled, and collaboratively edited. I don't believe anyone has gotten to that document yet, though. Again, the priority has been on the considerably more extensive and more carefully written tutorial series documents. > There are some tweaks i'd make to the tutorial provided there, as > well -- small things, but stuff that would help new learners avoid > a few time-consuming enigmas that, currently, just require a hit- > and-miss approach to solve. Sounds like a great first "patch". Since that one is still in html form, you can edit the html directly and just provide the updated file. A similarly very useful change would be to convert that document to Docbook. There are a variety of examples in doc/docbook in a source checkout. The original html is in doc/html/manuals/. > >As for the x86 binary for Linux, it's mostly just a matter of time > >[...snip...] > >on the code. > > is something i'd like to find a place for on the website -- > preferably on the brlcad website, its wiki, and at sourceforge, all > three -- and elaborate upon. I'd like to include information that > answers the questions: are the binaries intended as imperfect > demos, or as ready-to-go, full-featured apps? Under what > conditions can we expect them to function perfectly, and where can > users expect problems? Are root privileges required for full > functionality? Perhaps i'll come up with more questions later. :-) > > I'm rather good at generating questions. :-) Sounds fantastic. > > Of course, i know y'all're busy; that's why i volunteered -- to > see where i could help out. It seems as if it would be easiest if > i edited the website and sourceforge content by hand, but i can > understand if you're reluctant to hand over website permissions to > somebody you've just met. So how should i submit my modifications > -- pull the html from the wesbite, re-work them, and then send them > along as attachments, here? Or would you prefer a different method? Let's start with one or two things via proxy and then we can work on making things easier for both of us. You can submit your mods to either 1) the brlcad-devel mailing list, 2) post a link on our IRC channel (#brlcad on Freenode) and talk with one of us interactively to review/apply the change, or 3) post it to our sourceforge patches tracker [1] with the changes as attachments. Some devs prefer one over the other, but it's all the same to me. [1] https://sourceforge.net/tracker/? func=add&group_id=105292&atid=640804 Cheers! Sean ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _______________________________________________ BRL-CAD Users mailing list brlcad-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/brlcad-users
