On 26.05.2015, at 23:11, Marshall Schor <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not sure it's really necessary to tell the reader what the reasons might > be > that they would want to download older releases. I think most readers who > contemplate doing this would have their own reasons :-). > > Nevertheless, I'm trying to think up reasons (not sure they're "very good" > ones). One reason might be because some segment of the population downloading > things aren't ready to move to Java 7.
For me, keeping the last "Java 6" version highlighted would be a good reason, at least temporarily. I would explicitly mention that this is the reason, because in my opinion everybody not restricted by the Java version should really get the latest version. I would also mark it explicitly as a "legacy" release, cf. https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/ > Or, a user might discover what they believe to be a bug, or some other issue > (e.g. performance) in 2.7.0 and want to revert to 2.6.0, or at least try 2.6.0 > to compare. In my opinion, that is not a good reason. I would expect that somebody interested enough to switch back to an older version to test for a bug should be also be capable of fetching that older version from the archive (or from Maven Central). > ================= > > I'm guessing (but may be wrong) that another complaint about this page is that > it looks disorganized and haphazard. Perhaps another way to reorganize this > page so it doesn't appear so fragmented, is to change the "pivot" attribute - > that is, for instance: > > Have the top-level box be a bunch of links to 2nd level boxes, one per > super-artifact. (Super-artifact is the big thing we release, such as uimaFIT, > Ruta, UIMA Java framework and SDK, UIMA-AS, DUCC, etc.). > > The 2nd level box would be, for that "super-artifact", a list of a few of the > last releases. So for instance, there would be a box for UIMA Java framework > and SDK, and inside that box would be entries for version 2.7.0, 2.6.0, (and > maybe 2.5.0). We could add a column for linking to the JavaDocs (which are > shown in a separate section at the moment). > > That way, the clutter on the page would be reduced, and people could easily > see > the current release, and perhaps a release or 2 back-level, if needed. > > As I said in my previous comment, I think this web-page design is separate > from > where the artifacts are actually sourced from, so at anytime we could stop > using > the Apache mirror system for these artifacts that are older releases. > > WDYT? Did you check the patch I attached to the issue? I think it changes the organization in the way that you describe it, except that it doesn't list old artifacts and doesn't add the JavaDoc. The "weight" of the layout can still be improved if we can agree that the way the information is grouped and organized is ok. E.g. with the proposed layout, it becomes very obvious that UIMA C++ is stuck at 2.4.0 whereas UIMA Java is at 2.7.0. Are these even compatible with each other? Cheers, -- Richard
