[Pdweb] Exhibition Update

[IOhannes m zmoelnig]

Steffen wrote:
> On 10/04/2007, at 22.51, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
> 
> 
> Yes, the idea was as Hans said with only the one addition that in  
> the /community/projects/exhibition there is not only documentation  
> but also the organization (the schedule for example) of the project.

yes i am aware of that, and i think this is the way to do it.
however it does not convince me that there needs to be an extra
/exhibition space separated.

> 
> Since there is more in there then documentation i don't think it  
> should live in /docs/.

yes i totally agree here.
as said before i am no big fan of the /docs section anyhow (as far as it
is not concerned with "3rd party" documentation like pddp or pdb)
i do think that content and documentation of this content (and
organization of this content) should stay as close together as possible.

> 
> Since it's not dev like, but rather really is a community project, i  
> found that hosting the documentation and organization bits in / 
> community/projects/ was quite (and most) natural.

yes i agree too.

> 
> I am aware that this argument bit it self in it's tale as then the  
> "output", the actual exhibition, should "naturally" also live in / 
> community/project/. But, as argued in the proposal (or was it one of  
> the email that lead to the proposal), that would be hiding the  
> exhibition too much (to my taste). If this exhibition project succeed  
> I really think it will be very valuable addition to the Pd community.

yes of course.
the question is, why /community/projects/exhibition is "hiding". is it
because of the ease of typing? (http://puredata.info/exhibition vs
http://puredata.info/community/projects/exhibition/current)
of is it for making it prominent on the start-page? so people will
easily find the link (no matter how complicated)

> 
> That is why i found that putting the actual exhibition closer to  
> documentroot would be o.k. even when the documentation and  
> organization parts would live in /community/projects/ since  
> "closeness" to that "position" adds to the value of the project.

i am not sure whether i understand this.

> 
> If it itches too much it (the documentation and organizing stuff) can  
> be moved - of cause.
> 
> But it's not a technical reason that motivates it? The (re-)direct  
> thing was 'from /exhibition to /exhibition/vol-#' rather then 'from / 
> exhibition to /exhibition/FrontPage'. And also, the (re-)direct issue  
> is not dead necessary but rather just nice-to-have.

hmm, probably i should re-read the entire conversation.

just to make sure that this is clear: i am in no way opposed to the way
you organize this (and the fact that you do organize it).
i am just wondering whether there are ways to streamline the workflow.

i have not said all this as a reply to your original proposal, since i
don't think that this discussion is _that_ relevant; i think it rather
likely that such discussion would have stopped the process of getting
this exhibition done rather than fertilized it.
however, now that there is some work going on i would like to settle
this minor issue.

anyhow:

developping things in /com/proj/exh/vol-#/ and then moving them to /exh/
(or was it /exh/vol-#?) just seems to be a kludge.

the question is: what do we really want and what do we do because we
think this is the simplest way to make it work.

the way we have to work(around) with computers changes our way of
thinking. this often leads to solutions that are sub-optimal as they are
dominated by the way we might get the thing done rather than the way we
want the thing to be done.
(obviously i am within the same system so i might well do the very same
in the following paragraphs; please tell me about the beam in my eye)


i believe that this is what the proposal is about:
- having an exhibition on a prominent (easy to find) spot
- having an archive of all exhibitions
- being able to do all organisatorial stuff (of creating new exhibitions
and maintaining the old ones) online (independent of the place you
currently are and who you are (community concept)
- doing everything with minimum amount of work (no duplication of work!)

having the /exhibition place is clearly in fullfillment of the 1st item
in this list.
all the rest can happily live in /comm/proj/exh.

duplicating the content to the 2 folders OR moving it from one folder to
the other OR separating content and organization into 2 folders, is imho
only a way to achieve all items in the list.
however, i think that this is prone to errors and dead-ends (it is
easier to maintain one place than two places however close they are),
hence this email.

we could also achieve all items in the list if we have a way to make a
prominent place (e.g. "/exhibition") be the SAME thing as the
to-be-published exhibition (whereever it resides) AND
to make sure that the casual visitor is not disturbed by things they are
not really interested in (e.g. organizational stuff)


plone provides ways to acchieve both:
"hiding" things can be done by the work-flow (which is currently totally
unused in the puredata.portal; but there are really 3 states "private"
(only the owner of the object can see it), "published" (everybody can
see it) and "visible" (which currently is basically the same as
"published" (apart from the color) but really can be made into "visible
for members only" (e.g. all people that are currently logged in))
therefore we could have the entire documentation and organisation just
besides the real exhibition without worrying about having to tidy up the
exhibition space.
one problem is, that WikiPages are outside of the standard workflow (you
cannot set them "private" or "published");
i do not see a real reason why the exhibition should be based on
WikiPages (there are 3 main features of WikiPages over ordinary
'documents': "everybody" can edit (not a real _feature_ considered we
are talking about a curated exhibition), easy markup language (but you
can use StructuredText in ordinary documents as well) and easy subpage
creation (not relevant if each exhibition is restricted to one singe page)

making to links appear the same is a bit more tricky. to repeat my last
emails there are basically to ways to do it:
- the simple way: make a prominent link (e.g. an "exhibition" tab) on
the main-page that really points to the current exhibition.
- the harder way: make an equivalent of a symbolic link (this is: the
/exhibition IS the current /exhibition)

btw, making a _WikiPage_ ./exhbition/vol-# to be the default instead of
./exhbition/FrontPage is really rather simple.
however, if the exhibition would be a directory ./exhibition/vol-#/ this
would be harder to make the default view for the root (./exhibition), so
it might well be worth the effort to spend some time to make a "symbolic
link" feature work.


uäh, a long email; i am not sure whether i would read it myself ;-)


mfga.sdr
IOhannes

PS:

> PS. IOhannes, i've just been hitting reply-all; wasn't meaning to  
> sent the email(s) specifically to you. You just happened to be about.  
> I though the mail list software too care to multiple emails. Or is  
> another matter?

no problem.
sorry if my rant was on a too prominent place of my last email.