Re: new docs site, anyone ?

[Dominik Aumayr]

Whups, it seems I poked a hornet's nest there. - Ideological reasons (Google is evil for [some|many] people in these communities) That's a very difficult argument to make. I didn't want to make an argument (think "opinion") about that, but rather an observation (think "poll") that many OSS developers have a problem with Google. That could indeed be better, but other than the sidebar and the fact that's it looks familiar to Python users (which arguably aren't necessarily the typical Beancount user), and other than the sidebar, how is this: http://aumayr.github.io/beancount-docs-static/users/index.html substantially different or better than this? furius.ca/beancount/doc/index The reason for making my own "Index"-document for the beancount-documentation is a quite different one: I wanted to have a browse-able version of the great documentation you did put into the source code, not ditch Google Docs because I don't like that it looks unfamiliar or something else. But now that I have my Sphinx-based page in front of me, the navigation and search feature _do_ make it a better product in those terms. Honestly, editing it is a pain compared to Google Docs. As for "people to complain about Docs all the time": I didn't complain about the beancount docs being in Google Docs. In fact, I pointed out how it has "huge benefits" and what features I would miss. So... what tool allows me (and you) to produce the best possible documentation? Make yourself open to all possibilities for a moment: What attributes of this tool are needed for us to write great documentation? The reason I wrote the email in the first place was having a discussion about these questions. And that's why I listed the pros and cons of Google Docs, as it was brought up as an option. I'm saying that it's irrational for people to complain about Docs all the time - as it occurs time and time again either or my list, on private email or on other lists. It's a misguided criticism of a tool that provides a profound improvement to a process that is particularly difficult for us: WRITING. Docs is a really great tool for OSS projects. If you care about the result, you should want to use it. Maybe "irrational" to complain about the _benacount_ documentation to live in Google Docs, as this is already decided upon and maintained by you. But saying that "if we care about the results, we should want to use it" goes further: This effort here is at the start - no word of documentation written yet - and we discuss about which ways to go and which tools to use, "to produce great documentation". Discussing the virtues and drawbacks of any of the available tools should not cross a red line for anyone and be called "irrational". I do wish to reiterate what I already said in my last email: The virtues of WYSIWYG, editable by anyone and inline-comments are emense and I honestly think that Martin got many useful suggestions and content fixes out of that, as he stated previously. This should not be overlooked and dismissed just because of the name "Google" in it. Google Docs also has drawbacks (feature-wise and, for some people, ideologically) and as a software developer I propose to come up with our own system, taking all the great features and learnings from Google Docs and fixing it's drawbacks (which are great features of other tools out there) our own. Am 13.02.2016 um 06:30 schrieb Martin Blais <bl...@furius.ca>: On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 11:21 PM, Martin Blais <bl...@furius.ca> wrote: On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 7:49 PM, Ben Finney <ben+led...@benfinney.id.au> wrote: Martin Blais <bl...@furius.ca> writes: On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 1:48 AM, Dominik Aumayr <domi...@aumayr.name> wrote: And I also get why people might want something else […]: - Ideological reasons (Google is evil for [some|many] people in these communities) That's a very difficult argument to make. I don't agree with “evil”. A corporation is amoral, it doesn't have a coherent personality and should never be regarded as a person. What I do say is that it's unreasonable to pressure members of a community to entrust their social and collaborative data – highly valuable to the community – to a corporation that has no accountability to that community. Finally: I'm not pressuring you to do anything. I'm just expressing to Dominik how I've found this tool to be a powerful enabler for my own free software project, which IMO is interesting by virtue of being unusual usage in the free software arena. And, and just to be clear these views represent only my _personal_ views and pertain only to my open source project, and do not represent the views of any employers I've had, past or present. I think it's important to clarify with this disclaimer, in case you might have interpreted this otherwise. is because we don't want any of our social, collaborative processes to be mediated by a particular corporation. In the meantime you have a inexistant hypothetical "libre" wiki server which once you get consensus over who will take care of it will require ongoing maintenance by someone who will stop paying attention at some point and then it will rot out of date within three months. I've been there before, maintained a few of those myself. In the meantime I have an real, live ongoing conversation with my users in the documents which are constantly lighting up with feedback, buttressed by 100's of world-class engineers on their own cloud. For free. But maybe you feel more free. And in case, I don't think I'm going to change your mind tonight. And I have some code to write now. Good luck with the politics, I'd like to apologize for this comment, perhaps it got a bit carried away. I understand that you and Stefano have stronger requirements than I do over the software you use, that's your right. I can appreciate this - I do select the GPL for a reason - but at the end of the day, we disagree on those values when it comes to usage; I'm a pragmatist and I'm very impatient, I'll use what gets me moving over insisting on everything being free. It's okay to disagree. Cheers, -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Ledger" group. 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