On 4/18/2012 1:45 PM, Przemek Klosowski wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Kent A. Reed<kentallanr...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> >
>> > Speaking of the Wiki<nudge, nudge, wink, wink>, it could use a lot more
>> > editorial work. Looking at the Recent Changes listing, I see the usual
>> > few suspects making progress but there is a lot of work left.
>> >
>> > Back in January, after the decision was announced to rebrand our work
>> > LinuxCNC, I spent time under my SourceForge pseudonym CNCDreamer trying
>> > to fix up the most egregious instances of "EMC2" but had to leave a
>> > number of pages marked as "in progress" because they required technical
>> > changes I felt unprepared or even unqualified to make. Looking now, I
>> > see many of the same pages haven't been touched since. There are a
>> > number of pages that are terribly stale and the organization of the home
>> > page is trending toward chaos. Try to read it like you were new to
>> > LinuxCNC and see what you make of it.
>> >
>> > I wish I were in a position to do more of what needs to be done, but
>> > recent challenges at home make a concerted effort impossible. I'm lucky
> You're very persuasive--the
> can you make a list of pages that require most urgent update, in your opinion?
Gentle persons:
I don't have the time to do a quality job of this but just to throw out
some items that strike me...
[disclaimer: I realize that a wiki is by definition the antithesis of
order, since anything can be inserted anywhere any time, and that the
only criterion for anyone making a contribution is that they feel
motivated to do so. Nevertheless, I think it is incumbent on us to keep
our wiki relevant to newbies because it is like to be the first place
they look. Sure, we have written a boatload of manuals but, honestly,
don't most people go to a wiki first in hopes of not having to read
hundreds of pages of manuals?]
I'll assert without proof that the first places on the wiki a newcomer
would look are "News" and the first two major divisions of the ToC,
namely "About LinuxCNC" and "Getting Started."
To my way of thinking "News" suffers from two problems: 1) a lack of
posting dates or even an indication that it reads from newest to oldest,
and 2) a lack of parallelism---the announcements regarding the release
of 2.5 and 2.4.7 are interlineated (thanks, Michael!) with a much more
obscure announcement regarding versions of Ubuntu.
Section 1.
"About LinuxCNC" is more a discussion of the evolution of LinuxCNC from
EMC1 than a discussion of the features of LinuxCNC, which is what I
believe a newcomer would be likely to expect. Some of this stuff is as
old as my grandkids and it's less interesting. Here's a good place to
outline why people would want to use LinuxCNC.
"Screenshots" is pretty good but probably needs a comment about many of
the screens showing their EMC2 heritage.
"Videos" is what it is. I haven't checked it lately for broken links but
I believe there is at least one but probably only a few.
"Case Studies", same comments as the two above.
"Comparisons" implies much but yields little. I'd think a newcomer on a
budget would expect to see something about LinuxCNC vs Mach3 and any
serious CNC buff would expect to see more about other industrial
controllers than the existing one-line entry concerning an unknown
version of EMC versus Fanuc11m. I'm just saying....
"OldReleases" and "Released" need a little fixing up. The former means
releases prior to 2.4 and the latter now means 2.4.x and 2.5.
Section 2.
"Hardware Requirements" needs work to bring it up to current technology,
both in terms of LinuxCNC and in terms of platforms. Since the following
subsection "LinuxCNC Supported Hardware" also uses the word "Hardware"
but in the sense of interfaces, I think it would be useful to choose the
title "Computer Requirements" instead.
"LinuxCNC Supported Hardware" is probably as good as it gets given the
flux in the marketplace.
"Latency Test" is a conundrum for me. I can't figure whether it would be
better to sort it on brandname or on date of the system. Right now the
table seems a mixture of top posting, bottom posting, and alphabetical
posting. Still, I wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
"Installing LinuxCNC" is where I crashed and burned during the great
name change because the token "emc" is so well embedded in the names of
directories, scripts, what have you. I think an "executive" decision has
to be made. Is this page to support both installation of LinuxCNC 2.5
and also EMC2 2.4.7 and earlier? Then I believe the page has to be split
up into clearly demarcated subsections. A better solution may be to
create separate pages as in
Installing LinuxCNC
-LinuxCNC
-earlier, pre-namechange versions [please think of a better title]
"Install to CompactFlash" has one instance of "emc" which I missed in
January but otherwise is probably ok.
"LinuxCNC Pure Simulator" is in a similar situation as "Installing
LinuxCNC". From an organizational point of view, one also must wonder
why the former is not a subsection of the latter.
And I have to take my wife to another appointment. Ta ta for now.
Regards,
Kent
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