Dataface Forum and Documentation

[Aoirthoir]

Ive been doing doing some playing around with the search on this site. It seems that forums are not searchable (probably discussed that before.) What I am curious about is, it is a long list displayed when the forum comes up. Is this all of the forum items?

Also, there still seem to be some docs that I might be missing. When we click the Documentation link, it seems not to display all of the docs that have been linked to by the forum.

Any possibility of all of this being put on CD or in a tar for easier searching, including offline? If so how much would it cost?

Thank you kindly

[shannah]

Hi Aoirthoir,

Yes.. the forum is a bit of a sore point. I installed it at the beginning since everyone in the Plone community pointed to this as the best forum for Plone. I wanted a Plone forum so it would all be integrated -- and searchable. There is an upgrade for this forum available that includes a lot of new features (including searchability), but I haven't had a chance to sit down and do the upgrade. I tried a while back but it caused errors so I just reverted to the old one until the day when I have time to focus on it.

AFAIK all of the documentation that was ever on the site should still be on the site.

I think that Plone offers as good of search capabilities as we could achieve by making an offline version. I just need to upgrade the forum.

Another thing that should be done is knowledge consolidation. Many of the forum topics warrant a How-to document to be created. I.e. take what was described in the thread and turn it into a how-to. Any site member should have access to do this.

The forum has a long list of messages as a quick hack. By default it only showed 20 messages per page but didn't support paging, so you would seemingly lose older posts. I made it so that it just displays all of the posts on one page. Not the best solution (and starting to get unwieldy) but served the purpose at the time.

-Steve

[Aoirthoir]

Ok thanks Mr. Steve. I actually like all the forum topics on one page. As we get more it will be more difficult of course, but it works great for now.

As to the documentation, what seems to happen is, there will be a link on the main page, or a forum to a documentation, for instance how to do something. But if I click show all howtos or show all FAQs whatever, it might not be listed there. Since the page is listed someplace, the howto for example, thats good, i just wanted to make sure I was not missing anything.

While searching would be nice, if I can download it that would be fine also. Is it possible to get SQL dumps of the forum topics perhaps? Then I could reformat it. Actually, in that case, I would be willing to make howtos of the things contained within the forum topics.

And there does seem to be lots of docs. It is just harder to find some I think because perhaps they are a bit scattered. I dont know if SQL dumps of those are also possible. If they are, along with the howtos from the forums, I would be willing to put together a manual. Since I cannot help much with the PHP programming (not yet skilled enough) this would be something I could contribute. I have the time now tat I am just programming. We've replaced me in shipping, so another fella does the shipping. Whereas before I had to do shipping during the day and try to program at night. Very exhausting. Now I can program during the day, and do things like this doc thing, if you want, at night.

Also going to get that flow charting stuff next week.

Thanks bro.

[shannah]

Congrats on your new position! Must be nice to be able to focus on one thing. I'm happy to hear that you'll be able to help out with the documentation. A Dataface manual is sorely needed. What do you think of adding it in the Reference Manuals section of the Documentation area. That way it can evolve online with the community.

-Steve

[Aoirthoir]

I think that is an excellent idea. Basically right now, I am jumping here and there on the site to find info. Do I look up in the howto, or the reference manuals, or the forums. So I am thinking one, regular manual would be nice. So in the reference manuals would be fine by me. Since a lot of this stuff is already written, the users manual could be as simple as links pointing to various places. For instance there isnt a need to make a fields.ini section since that is already written. Perhaps a fields.ini tips and tricks..but the fields.ini itself could simply be linked to.

So I figure kind of first just start organizing it all. SQL dumps would just let me view the overal picture. Like I need to do with the flow charting. Then I can see how to start to put it all together.

BTW this is a three day weekend for us in the states, so I could put a lot of this together then if you want.

[Aoirthoir]

Thanks for the congrats. Yes it is very nice to be able to concentrate now one one kind of thing (though many many things of that kind ). While I still have more training to do with my replacement, and I will assist him if he gets behind, it is a great load off my shoulders and now our projects are going to move forward a lot more.

[njw]

Happy to help if I can.

It may be my age, but I print out the documentation and put it in a loose leaf file - there are times when it's so much quicker to find stuff on paper!

Neil

[Aoirthoir]

I agree NJW. I did that at first. But the docs of course change alot in a rapidly growing app like Dataface. Plus I have a little thing called a pepper pad ( http://www.pepper.com/ ) and its like a little electronic book/ web reader/ linux computer.. etc. So if I can get the docs organized..I can read them from there as I would on paper.

[njw]

I'll remember the Pepper Pad when my Palm dies - if they're selling it in the UK by then!

Thanks

Neil

[Aoirthoir]

Sign up at the pepper forums. There are UK members that have them. The new pepper 3 is really nice. Smaller screen, same width shorter height. Built in camera. you can buy a pepper 2 for 500 now though. Any current owners of the pepper, can get a pepper 3 for 500 also if they sign up by sept 30. It would ship on oct 1. Thats 200 off of the retail. I am considering it. I was also considering buying an old pepper now. Then I could buy two peppers at the special price. But my boss split halves with me on a laptop. 2 gig ram..lots of niceties. I will be running puppy linux on it, with VMware if I can get the vmware going. (http://www.puppylinux.com/)

Anyhow I love the pepper I have. the new one is supposed to have better battery life, better wifi range. In addition it will be running fedora core 4. It is on a standard processor. Whereas the one I have is on an ARM processor. Which means most software has to be compiled specifically for it. The pepper folks are real helpful though. And Chuma over at the forum has set up a wiki. He has lots of things like VNC compiled for it.

However the new one wont require recompiles. If it runs on fedora 4 it will run. It will probably run stuff that is compiled for later fedoras also. Wine is already known to work on it. I had a topic over there about it and the pepper folks responded. They didnt have time to play around with VMware yet. But Chuma is going to give it a try. Long and the short, is the pad will be able to run full fledged windows programs. So combined with my laptop...I will have lots of portability. Eventually I will get two of them, and try to set up a method of viewing two pages on two different peppers simultaneously. So say I am looking at a PDF, one shows page 1, the other page 2. If I change pages, I want both to change automatically to page 3 and page 4. Just like a real book. I can probably do it in windows with VMware..not sure how to do it in linux. (Support for pdfs is bad in linux).

So then using that I will create a little leather book cover. Then one will go in one side, the other in the other side and it will open just like a book. Thus you see what I mean about reading the docs like a book.

[Aoirthoir]

Mr. Steve,

Ok we have a three day Holiday. I dont know about NJW over in the UK. But he has offered to help. And that makes at least two of us to jumpstart this. I can devote the entire three days, minus time for my kitty kats....meow, to this project.

Next week I will get the flow charting done. And from there can add more docs. Right now what I am thinking is starting with ALL the docs we have. Trying to just map them out and organize them. I might have to print them.

Ok I just talked to my boss. I can come in this weekend. The network consultant will be in tomorrow about 2pm. I will stay late this evening. I will possibly print as much as I can.

However, if it is at all possible to get just SQL data of this stuff, that would make it a lot easier for me. Your sql would remain the same. Then I would use it to copy and paste into a manual format and send that back to you. We could coordinate with NJW.

Also if there are other docs that you have that are not on the site yet, like pre-docs, I am willing to try to work those in also.

Finally I realize the dataface code itself has docs (I think) but I need to kind of organize that with the flows to understand whats going on. Any time I look at parts of the code I can figure out what's happening with a little work. But it will boost my efforts if I am organized. (Thus the reason I want a good php editor...)

[njw]

$1000 for a book - now there's someone with a load of cash!!! I'll stick with my Palm for now.

Neil

[Aoirthoir]

First, that is if you buy two. Also it isnt a book, it is one of the uses I will put it to. It is two full fledge linux fedora computers. If fedora can do it, then both of these units will be able to do it. Including acting as a couple of tiny servers. Were I so inclined. Certainly not as fast as a rack system...but workable easily.

It would be like me saying about any computer, windows or linux "1249.00 for a solitaire game?"

Remember, these are full computers...in a tiny package. Palm has its uses, and I really dig palm, have recommended it many times. But the screen for me is too tiny for effective web browsing, computing even if I used it to vnc into another computer, and reading.

So for instance with this 1000 "book" I can be out at a restaraunt, connect to wifi, vnc into my computer at home and do something, or I can go in ssh and modify my dataface programs when an idea hits me, or I can surf the web natively, or for that matter have my dataface code on the computer and an apache server/php server/mysql server, and my dataface stuff, and then anywhere with or without wifi I could test code Ideas I get right on the spot.

For me it is worth it with all of the features it has. Also, I should be able to run vmware on it, and in a virtual machine, install windows or even intel based mac os soon, and run anything from those I would need too. Not scaled down versions.

However, if I am trying to go for a run, or I just need something for my pocket, I would use my webfone or a palm type thing. These arent an answer all and they certainly arent an answerall for all. But they are in a small enough package (about 20 ounces) with a large enough screen (8 inches) that they fulfil a lot of my needs, including media, playing audio and video files.

So bro hope you dont take it like I am sayin for you to get two of them. I am just sayin I want to get two. Thats all

[njw]

Worry not - I have a British sense of humour. Also I come from Yorkshire - we are renowned for being careful with money! (That's the polite way of expressing it).

I'm starting to learn Linux now - only Ubuntu for me (remember the Yorkshire bit?) - as I have been given a load of old PCs and canabalising them I might get three reasonable machines - 2 desktops and a server. Give me some time and I may even agree with you!

Neil

[Aoirthoir]

LOL NJW.

Yeah, my old Job has lots of old pcs for sale for real cheap. I am thinking of buying a bunch of them and doing the same. I will be running most things on Puppy linux though. If you are just getting into linux it is a good distro. Check this out...it is a live cd/dvd version. With a twist. If you burn the DVD/CD multisession, then you can save all your puppy settings back to the CD each time. Which is why it is THE live CD distro for me, for most things. I'd use Knoppix if I really had to troubleshoot a machine though...

Word of warning, no windows DVD burner will burn a DVD bootable multisession properly. So what I do is, burn puppy to a CD first, then run puppy, and use its built in software to burn the ISO back to a DVD, rather than use a windows software. Puppy is a great distro to test out a lot of things for Linux, of course it doesnt have everything..but it is small..lightweight and FAST. The Entire distro runs in ram if you have 128MB of ram. This includes office type apps like Abiword, Gnumeric, Bluefish Editor, Ah heck its gotta lotta stuff. And its fun to play with. Everything loads instantly when I run it on my PCs. http://www.puppylinux.com/

Of course I like Fedora so far. But that could be just cause I like gnome and K. I started with Gnome, and ignored all the recommendations for K. But finally today I switched over and am thrilled. It is so configurable and I dont have to hunt all over the danged place for most settings. With gnome I couldnt figure out how to change most settings. Even the menues arent easy to change for cryin out loud. (Not tryin to start a gnome war here...I DO like gnome..but I am liking K now it seems...)

But Ubuntu sounds good from what I have heard about it. I really want a super light way distro to install on the HD. Then I will run puppy most times. But run VMware for all the other things..and if Puppy fails to load I can resort to the distro on the hard drive. I have someone working on Puppy with /Vmware. If he gets that going, I might just put Puppy on the HD. Then run things like Ubuntu, Fedora, Windows etc from VMware. On my laptop at least (2gig ram).

As to the pepper...I will run vmware on it of course..but its for those times I cant do anything else. For instance they havent got Digital Restrictions Management running on it yet as far as I know. So I could install windows on it and just use the built in Media Player to access things like Yahoo Music Service..or whichever one I sign up with.

As to bein a brit from any part of the Isle, I wont hold it agin ya Less you hold me bein Irish agin me. (Ok Irish American..) Well even then I'd prolly not hold it agin ya. Irish Americans and Brits seem to get along fine. But there was this one anglo american one time that was really ticked I said I was Irish..it was funny man.