Re: Site, apps and CMS (Was: Re: StepTalk blog)

[MJ Ray]

Stefan Urbanek <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-08-12 at 19:28 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> > CVS is not very hard. It's one command on a menu (Tools > Version
> > Control) in Emacs to save with a comment, or make a diff for
> > emailing to webmasters. Is this really a "very great barrier"?
> > At least CVS is common across many free software projects and
> > most newer version control generally has a similar workflow,
> > so people can gain transferable skills by working on gnustep.org.
> 
> You can stop at words "emacs" and "diff". Yes, it is very great barrier.
> You are programmer, therefore for you not. Same for CVS.

I wasn't born a programmer. I learnt these interfaces (for
writing student assignments rather than for programming,
IIRC). The main practical difference is you save twice, once
to $HOME, once to CVS. It really is not difficult.

Why does it make it harder if the web editing interface is
a common package for GNU/Linux, rather than an interface in a
web browser window? CMS interfaces are not necessarily simple:
I seem to recall that a lot of my Zope editing was done with
Emacs and ange-ftp because I found the Zope interface of the
time hard to learn.

[...]
> > 2. a small number of nidjits say they think it is closed
> > and offer "solutions" which may not improve things.
> 
> How do you know that the solutions will not improve things? Yes, they
> may not. But you can only learn if you try it.

Or you could show some research to support your view that there
is this vast pool of editors who would help with gnustep.org,
were it not for needing to use version control. (Good CMSes
often have version control: does SPIP? Won't that confuse too?)

I use CMSes a lot. I'm worried that you are going to make
gnustep.org harder for me to update. Already we lose the mirrors,
then apps and wiki become things I can't edit.  If there's a
clear plan instead of just "let's install FOO and never mind
security" and enough people saying "we'll do the work" then I
won't worry so much.

Thanks,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/