Site Structure v.2.0.1 -- Steve Hall
DANGER! In Progress. Don't believe anything you read here!
A page like this is almost purposeless without defining terms. Please review Statement of Facts 0.0.0 before making comments on the structure below.
This page represents the content structure of the new site. It has nothing to do with the links on any specific page. It is the site map.
Notes
- Content cross-linked topically from other logical locations in the structure is indicated through italicized brackets, like [Roadmap]. In some cases this might be a simple cross-link. In other cases, such as with dynamic content, perhaps the cross-linked page would have derivative information adjusted for context.
Overview:
- Using GNOME
- Welcome!
- Themes/Art/Eye Candy/Skins
- Press
- Help
- Developer Community
- Intro (Developer Home)
- News and Info
- Documentation
- Software Database
- Projects
- Resources, Links
- Communities
- Foundation
- FAQ
- Charter
- Policy
- Application
- Elections
- News
- Search
Using GNOME
Assumes the user has a system with GNOME already installed and properly maintained via distribution installation, a System Administrator or a third party commercial delivery system such as HelixCode or Eazel. We could also assume the user is a Windows user just wanting to know what Linux is and ended up here because our art/name is cool. He's probably not interested in joining the GNOME Developer Community yet and really just wants productivity from the desktop, although enough educational/marketing material needs to exist here in the user section to enable a later transition to contributor if desired.
- Welcome!
- What is GNOME? "What is a desktop?" and "Is it like Windows?"
- How can you make Free Software and how can it be any good?
- Screen Shots
- Bugs - I've found a bug, what do I do? (Brief pages which describe the open source philosophy and its implications. No smart answers like "Read the source, the man, or the docs, you stupid newbie!" Great opportunity to explain expose the developer side, Free software, etc.)
- [News/Features/Headlines] - Special information and articles of general interest extracted from the main database in Developer News. Things like "Number of GNOME users increasing" and "Bob explains meta-themeing". Features appearing here on the user side would be written especially for this audience.
- Download - This section should be a maze of documents for Windows users explaining that GNOME requires *nix, root access, knowledge of RPM (or worse, their compiler!) and why they really doesn't want to download GNOME without these things.
- How to install GNOME - We will probably never have the resources to create a delivery system as useful or efficient as the commercial companies for a typical user. Although I believe that GNOME should always be available from the GNOME site (!), I think we will do better explaining how the basic desktop components work for the user on this side. We can always hesitatingly point experienced users to the Developer side to obtain the extended range of software. We need to focus on helping the user with the core desktop (calculator, calendar, applets, etc.), all of which will probably be installed for him already. Remember, he doesn't have root access and isn't capable of compiling source anyway. (Like me.)
- Press/Marketing/About
- Press Releases (which aren't the same as news items)
- A press photo of Miguel. (His shoe size, typical IRC nicknames, list of movies he's been in, etc. :)
- [Screen shots] A few choice ones linked from the User/Home section.
- History of GNOME
- Future of GNOME - A simplified version of [Roadmap]
- Press Contacts
- [Calendar] (Maintained in Developer)
- Other appearances
- Radio clips (from National Public Radio)
- * Linux Rises - The Linux computer operating system has moved from the computer world's fringe to the heart of corporate America. The free, decentralized system is being featured by big computer makers such as Dell and IBM. But Linux is still hard to use and average computer users are unlikely to abandon Microsoft's Windows anytime soon. (4:30) [Brief comments by Andy Hertzfeld, co-founder of Eazel, maker of the Nautilus interface for GNOME. 16 August 2000.]
- ** Open Source Movement - NPR's Larry Abramson reports on the open source movement. It may sound unfamiliar, but considering what it's done for operating systems like Linux and Red Hat, it may be the hottest trend in computer programming. (8:12) [2 August 2000. Comments by Eric Raymond, Will Grosman (sp?), Miguel deIcaza, Nat Friedman]
- AOL-Linux - NPR's John McChesney reports that America Online is teaming up with computer maker Gateway to produce a device that will be known for what it doesn't have: a Windows operating system and an Intel chip. The internet appliance the two companies will make will use the Linux operating system and a chip from a little-known company called Transmeta. (3:15) [30 May 2000.]
- Linux Operating System - Host Bob Edwards talks with John Dodge, editor of PC Week magazine. An alternative to Microsoft's Windows program is called the Linux operating system. According to Dodge Linux is gaining popularity, it can be used on older personal computers and is very reliable. (3:26) [10 November 1999.]
- Linux - Weekend Edition commentator Rich Dean reports on the computer operating system called Linux (LINN-ucks), which is making Microsoft very nervous. (3:45) [24 January 1999]
- Linux OS - Windows sells the dominant operating system that makes computers do what they do when you tell them to. But there's another operating system that's free--the creation of a Finnish programmer who put it out on the world wide web and invited any and all to improve it. The resulting "committee-written" system is finding favor with more and more computer-savvy users worldwide. (8:15) [8 April 1998. Brief comments by Richard Stallman]
- Microsoft's Competition - Host Bob Edwards talks with Dan Gillmor about the LinuxWorld Conference. Linux is an increasingly popular "open source" operating system that may emerge as a challenge to Microsoft. (3:16) [2 March 1999.]
- Open Source Software & the Future of the PC - Open source software programs, including the computer-operating system Linux, continue to win converts from Windows. How much of a threat to Microsoft does open source software pose? And could changes in the PC market make all of this software obsolete? (46:51) [11 June 1999. Segment from Talk of the Nations, Science Friday with Ira Flatow. Guests: Tim O'Reilly President and CEO, O'Reilly and Associates, Sebastopol, California; Steven Levy, Senior Editor, Newsweek Magazine, New York, New York; Scott Bradner, Senior Technical Consultant, Harvard University Cambridge, Massachussetts. Brief discussion of GNOME at 29:06-32:38; cameo appearance by Philip Greenspun.]
- Television
- Print
- On-line
- [External Resources] - Maybe a select few from Developer?
- A glossary
- Help/User Docs
- Quick start
- GNOME users guide
- Tutorials
- Themes
- Commercial support - This page should have a brief Commercial v. Do-It-Yourself (developer.gnome.org) discussion and begin to present the benefits of getting involved with your own system. A great jump off point to the Developer side.
- Dead tree guides - List of paper resources on GNOME.
Developer
This is where our community begins. On the other side, the individual user is interested in just getting GNOME to work and finding out what it can do. But if he's impressed enough to dig deeper, and perhaps tries a dual boot installation on his home computer, then he'll need the support of the larger community. To me, that's the minimum audience for Developer: Self-installation via RPM or SRC.
This front page should be exciting enough so that enthusiasts make it their first GNOME page. News, project of the week, featured articles; all should be headlined here similar to the current front page of www.gnome.org except with the full range of News/Features/Interviews and designed for a minimum 600x800.
- News/Features/Interviews/Featured Columnist
- ToDo Lists - All three actually are referenced from the ToDo database in Projects.
- [Project of the day] (simple task)
- [Project of the week] (medium task)
- [Project of the month] (difficult task)
- [Recent Software]
- Gnotices / Developer News / Developer Interviews / Featured Columnist - I don't understand why these sections can't all be combined, similar to Slashdot, NewsForge, etc. It would simplify the creation of new material and ensure that the most number of eyes saw the entire body of work. This fact alone would probably be a big improvement in keeping it fresh. We could develop classes of articles, but they would all be in one database and generally viewed here in total. We could extract special classes for certain purposes, like User Features.
- Calendar - Pointless unless up to date.
- Software
- Developer Resources
This section contains all Core GNOME resources for the developer apart from those independent and large enough to be Projects or Communities (below). It is the catch all section of resources and contributions. As such, specific attention will need to be focused here to prevent it from getting as tentacled and disorganized as the current developer section.
One possible reason for the mess we're in right now with documentation is that it has been sequestered in it's own area. Documentation should be done by the developers that create the software. This is only going to happen if each writes his own. As it stands now, Documentation is so far away from the content it describes that nobody even knows where it is, much less maintains it.
On the other hand, the ASCII docs that get distributed with every package (COPYING, ChangeLog, etc.) seem to be fairly up to date, even if not well written. Why aren't these extracted/submitted into the database for HTML viewing? If I've got to CVS something just to read about it, chances are, I won't bother.
- Why Contribute? - Philosophical explanation of open source, Freedom, and GNU. (Probably links back to the User side's [Press/History of GNOME].)
- Architecture - OK, here's the culprit heading currently causing all the confusion. $5 to anybody who can figure out this cesspool. A bunch of this stuff looks to me like it belongs in Projects, but the rest needs an overhaul.
Isn't this stuff really just Developer Documentation? It seems like a mixture of explanation, catalog and redirection to other resources. Why don't we just re-categorize the whole mess below Developer Resources, collecting like pieces together? (Like GTK/Drag and Drop and Documentation/Drag-and-Drop in GTK+ and GNOME.) There's a wealth here, but who can navigate to what they need?
So Architecture, Documentation, Tools and Widgets all get reorganized under Developer Resources. Extracted out of the list are items that were somebody's good idea for a component but never ended up serving more than one purpose. These are either re-distributed under another more pertinent topic, dumped into a new heading "Incubator" if they are pipe dreams, or into "Projects" if they have potential to be independent from the Core.
As a non-developer, I'm going to find it hard to help in the nuts and bolts part of this reorganization. But on the surface, there appears to be numerous headings here that are either redundant with separately maintained projects or nothing more than one individuals "dump" of what he knows for the benefit of the community and properly classified as documentation.
Take GTK. Why does it have both a project page (www.gtk.org) and a massive write up under developer.gnome.org? Can't we all just get along?!
Consolidation is in order. GNOME is going to have to commit to depending on links to independent Community sites for certain content or it will have to make it's own individual Project sites (below) under Developer for each topic that is too large to fit here under Developer Resources. This business of redundant information is doubling the effort required to maintain project documentation and killing developers' interest in contributing to it.
Stuff highlighted in yellow (below) still under construction.
- Contacts
- External Links - Except that specific Communities and projects should be removed from this page, although links to those two sections should be obvious.
- New stuff I'm adding as I think about it...
- All sorts of GNOME web banners (businesslike, animated, huge, tiny). (Perhaps could develop into a whole multimedia thing like the "GNOME sound". Hey, Microsoft and Intel have one!)
- Projects - Contained within the realm of www.gnome.org and visually part of the same site. (See Community for areas which are truly independent.) Projects are generally smaller and have less traffic than a Community, but embody a collection of ideas significant enough to have their own maintainer apart from the Developer Resources area. A project has at least a few pages but may be as many as three levels deep and contain a complete work such as a manual or tutorial. This is the area for endeavors that are being matured into Communities.
- Communities - Each have their own independent domain, site design and information structure. The GIMP or AbiWord are perfect examples.
Foundation
- FAQ
- Charter
- Policy
- Application
- Elections
- News -- Specific to Foundation and Foundation members.
Search