Re: Breaking www.gnome.org down a bit

[Curtis Hovey <sinzui cox net>]

On Thu, 2004-09-16 at 18:06 +0200, Claus Schwarm wrote:

> > Writing without much consideration, I'd say we want to see a name, a
> > one line description, a paragraph to sell itself, a list of key
> > features, and a screenshot.  We need a sidebar for users that presents
> > the homepage url, the status of the app, GNOME versions, distro
> > downloads, and user-guide.  We need a sidebar for developers that
> > lists the maintain, contact info, repository info, langauge/APIs used.
> >  We want a
> > simple single page, and www.apple.com/software may be a start of what
> > we want.
> > 
> > I think there are use cases for:
> > User downloads an app to complete some task.
> > User looks for an app for a pointer to documentation.
> > User checks for updates to an app he already has.
> > User wants to dress up their desktop...discovers art.gnome.org
> > Developer looks for an app that has features he wants to hack on.
> > Developer looks for an app that uses a language or API of interest.
> > 
> 
> Thank you very much for the details. :-)
> 
> I understand these are not the last words, and will probably be refined.
> 
> One question thought, if you don't mind: What software should be listed
> there? This is the most important part, IMHO, to get an idea on how the
> use cases could be reached.

I typed as fast as I could and still couldn't get a whole use case out
in the last email.  I've been meaning to write some use cases for the
software catalog, but I haven't found the time.  However you have done
some work already, so why not put forward your use cases for us to
review.  Now we need a wiki to put this up, critique it to come to a
final list of cases.  We can make do with email for now I suppose.

> For example, you could mean software.gnome.org to be an index for
> selected projects, maybe only those hosted by gnome. Or it could lists
> all projects that "hook" themselves in, just like planet.gnome.org

We would like to include all apps that use the GNOME APIs.  Our interest
in DOAP is that it lets local and remote projects maintain a file that
we can pickup and turn into a page.  Once a project is registered, we
would check it on a timely basis and regenerate its page.  There is some
hope that DOAP will be used by other sites, making their task of
communicating information about their project easier.

> I ask because from your description it reads a little bit like the
> "project detail page" should be a replacement for a project homepage,
> and the apple software site also looks like this.

We want to give a consistent presentation for users and developers.  It
will be easier to make comparisons between software.  Returning users
should be able to apply the rules they learned during their last visit.
Users will not get lost moving between sites to answer their first
questions.  Maintainers do not need to make a pretty site to attract the
users.  Maintainers do not need to redesign their site to accommodate
the information we want.  We do not want to keep uses from visiting
another site, but if users comes to the GNOME software catalog looking
for software, they should not have to go offsite to answer simple
questions.

-- 

__C U R T I S  C.  H O V E Y____________________
sinzui cox net
Guilty of stealing everything I am.