Re: The D-word
hiya chiming in a little late. but i think many people would be attracted to a basic cms, as often as it's been done. possibly without all the role and permissions fuss but a basic page hierarchy and editable pages so people can make their scrap books, photo albums and so on. make it very basic, and explain it well, and then every other month it can be expanded on, add an ajax sprinkle, add a permissions/group role what have you. must have's. 1. db access, how to setup, run etc. 2. illustrate various types of relationships, hierarchical would be nice to show :-) 3. file upload and management, file delete on record delete etc. 4. login / logout for the basic admin user then every other month or when someone adds a feature (eg, ajax rich text editing, user and group roles) or mutates it for a specific purpose (photo album, address book) we can make a tutorial out of it. Using our basic cms structure... i'd be glad to contribute some of the writing and such, i'm quite fluent in english and my grammar is a lot more robust than my emails would lead you to believe. i'd need help with the coding though, since i'm new to ruby and camping and i've honestly been sort of following along from the side lines. it's a hobby but one i'd be willing to invest time on if the community is interested. just my 2cents best cornelius On 09.06.2009, at 23:56, Magnus Holm wrote: Oh, that would be very nice! Right now there is an example at camping.rubyforge.org showing a blog skeleton (with controllers, models and views). It might be better to rather have a tiny, fully functional one (to get the feel of Camping), and a link to blog.rb (which should be simplified even more, and actually work). The book could then take it from there and slightly expand into the blog.rb (or maybe even totally different; we should at least end up with something) You know, I remember stumbling on Camping after trying out Rails, and it was a horrible feeling ending up at page 3 of the tutorial (on the old wiki) where a giant TODO screamed at me. I think many newcomers would have a look at alternatives to Rails, and it would be great if we could guide them not only through Camping, but also on the way you have to think when you're developing on the web. Without boring them too much. At the same time, there will probably be some Rubyists/webdevs who just want to learn about Camping too. What if we start easy with lots of code and introduce them to Camping, then (if we bother to) more in-depth about the web, HTTP, GET/POST/PUT/DELETE, limitations? You could follow the book right through and will end up with basic understanding of the web, or just skip after the quickstart (and three months later, after you've experimented a bit, you take the trouble to trouble to read the rest). Maybe book is the wrong word for this too. A book is so formal and strict. This should be light, simple and something you just can dive right into whenever you want. Let's keep it simple and precise, yet informal! The API as a cheat is a great idea too, let's not forget that :-) When it comes to the dependency on Rack, I'm not that worried. You almost can't do any webdev in Ruby today without meeting on Rack. And you only need to have the Rack-library somewhere where Camping can find it (just download and unzip it to vendor/rack for instance), even though using the gem is preferred. Anyone else want to chime in? (Yes, you do!) I currently have some RDoc templates which renders the book/readme/ api. It definitely needs to be cleaned up a lot, but I guess I can push it out at a branch when I get back to my computer. //Magnus Holm ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
The D-word
Oh, yes. Let's (once again) try to clean the documentation up a bit :-) I have no facts behind me, but I assume there would be two kinds of people who would like to browse camping.rubyforge.org: 1. Beginners who want to know what it's all about, how to get started and how to get help. 2. Campers who don't quite remember which method to use, or where the mailing-list was located, or how you did X etc. So here's a little proposal: What if we split the documentation into three parts? - README.txt should be the first you see and should contain basic info and links. - API-reference. A one-page reference to the whole Camping API which gives you short descriptions/explanations and might also give a link to the book (see below) for more detailed thoughts. - A book or tutorial which guides the user from A-Z, starting with installation and how to use The Camping Server, through basic MVC and HTTP/REST to how to use service-overrides or middlewares. It would be really nice if this could be a clean, short and concise guide to both Ruby and web development. What'd you think? What do you miss most from the current (almost non-existing) documentation? //Magnus Holm ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list
Re: The D-word
Oh, that would be very nice! Right now there is an example at camping.rubyforge.org showing a blog skeleton (with controllers, models and views). It might be better to rather have a tiny, fully functional one (to get the feel of Camping), and a link to blog.rb (which should be simplified even more, and actually work). The book could then take it from there and slightly expand into the blog.rb (or maybe even totally different; we should at least end up with something) You know, I remember stumbling on Camping after trying out Rails, and it was a horrible feeling ending up at page 3 of the tutorial (on the old wiki) where a giant TODO screamed at me. I think many newcomers would have a look at alternatives to Rails, and it would be great if we could guide them not only through Camping, but also on the way you have to think when you're developing on the web. Without boring them too much. At the same time, there will probably be some Rubyists/webdevs who just want to learn about Camping too. What if we start easy with lots of code and introduce them to Camping, then (if we bother to) more in-depth about the web, HTTP, GET/POST/PUT/DELETE, limitations? You could follow the book right through and will end up with basic understanding of the web, or just skip after the quickstart (and three months later, after you've experimented a bit, you take the trouble to trouble to read the rest). Maybe book is the wrong word for this too. A book is so formal and strict. This should be light, simple and something you just can dive right into whenever you want. Let's keep it simple and precise, yet informal! The API as a cheat is a great idea too, let's not forget that :-) When it comes to the dependency on Rack, I'm not that worried. You almost can't do any webdev in Ruby today without meeting on Rack. And you only need to have the Rack-library somewhere where Camping can find it (just download and unzip it to vendor/rack for instance), even though using the gem is preferred. Anyone else want to chime in? (Yes, you do!) I currently have some RDoc templates which renders the book/readme/api. It definitely needs to be cleaned up a lot, but I guess I can push it out at a branch when I get back to my computer. //Magnus Holm On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 19:30, Dave Everitt dever...@innotts.co.uk wrote: I'm quite good at clear an understandable English (and editing the work of others) so would be glad to help make the documentation as usable as possible. I reckon we need two starting examples somewhere (a download link in the README?): 1. 'It worked - you are now Camping!' (without a DB); 2. a foolproof version of the minimal blog. I think you're dead right about the two kinds of users and three parts of documentation. As for the book (WebDev with Ruby, using Camping as an example?), it would be good to follow the spirit of Camping and keep it under... well, not 4k, but you get the point. The Camping philosophy needs to pervade the docs too - there's cultural capital in it, which could become a real attraction. I also suggest putting up the '1-page API' on 'cheat'. I have one slight concern for those on shared hosting: that it's 'not possible to run Camping without Rack'. It might take some thinking about how best to do this without root (or how to ask your provider to add the necessary). Many prospective Campers won't change servers just to try something out. Not necessarily an obstacle, but it needs some thought (a cleaned up pre-rack version? Camping 'classic'?). DaveE Oh, yes. Let's (once again) try to clean the documentation up a bit :-) I have no facts behind me, but I assume there would be two kinds of people who would like to browse camping.rubyforge.org: 1. Beginners who want to know what it's all about, how to get started and how to get help. 2. Campers who don't quite remember which method to use, or where the mailing-list was located, or how you did X etc. So here's a little proposal: What if we split the documentation into three parts? - README.txt should be the first you see and should contain basic info and links. - API-reference. A one-page reference to the whole Camping API which gives you short descriptions/explanations and might also give a link to the book (see below) for more detailed thoughts. - A book or tutorial which guides the user from A-Z, starting with installation and how to use The Camping Server, through basic MVC and HTTP/REST to how to use service-overrides or middlewares. It would be really nice if this could be a clean, short and concise guide to both Ruby and web development. What'd you think? What do you miss most from the current (almost non-existing) documentation? ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/camping-list ___ Camping-list mailing list Camping-list@rubyforge.org
