[Scons-dev] Review scons.org/guidelines.php

[anatoly techtonik]

On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 9:50 PM, Dirk Bächle <tshortik at gmx.de> wrote:
> On 14.05.2015 19:00, anatoly techtonik wrote:
>>
>> My 0.02 cents is site works is not as important as wiki. And unless any
>> of us have an education in webdesign or a good experience with, I
>> doubt that anybody will produce a theme that is not stolen from some
>> Bootstrap designs.
>
>
> and why exactly would this kind of "stealing" be a bad thing?

https://www.google.com/webhp?#q=why%20bootstrap%20is%20bad

and also think about that you might be biased

https://www.lullabot.com/blog/article/10-commandments-modern-web-design#principle-five


> Using original design that not so modern might be
>>
>> better than using something that you find exciting, but everybody else
>> already tired of.
>
>
> In my eyes, this makes it even more important to have a good separation
> between the theme/skin/style and the actual content. Just like for our
> documentation (DocBook) we would be open to theme changes, without having to
> touch the content. It would also be easier to kind-of "outsource" the
> styling of the page to a designer with no knowledge and/or interest in the
> technical details of our project, if that should ever be required or simply
> falls into our hands.

Designers are more skilled in dealing with PHP than in Python frameworks,
believe me. Smarty is the industry standard, but for SCons needs, hacking
current site is fun without Smarty. It has the lowest possible entry barrier (if
you can write PHP).

My opinion about DocBook didn't change. Nobody is able to tweak the
themes. Every DocBook site looks the same. If you want to experiment with
generators and the stuff - look at Sphinx.

>>
>> I like that current site don't require compilation. I don't see why do you
>> need this extra step. If somebody wants to help with web, it is better to
>> resurrect the wiki with spam protection scheme, captcha or reputation.
>
>
> The focal point of the current discussion is not about "the web" in general.
> It's about getting more active in the direction of social media, like
> Twitter or RSS/Atom feeds...such that interested people can subscribe and
> get notified about changes and can feel that the project is alive.

Having Spyder pages in Facebook, G+, Twitter, Google Groups, GitHub
I now don't really know where to look for stuff and provide feedback. More
over, some valuable info is passing somewhere without my knowledge and
I don't think it is good to have so many channels. I agree that mailing lists
are weird, but unless there is a dedicated person, who tracks all the stuff
and keeps different communities informed about important communication
going anywhere, this might not be as useful. Anyway, I don't see how web
site redesign helps with social media. You can add RSS to current site
with much less work that for any other. It is possible to stuff the news into
version control.

>> In the end, it may happen that we will move to GitHub and just use
>> GitHub pages, but wiki would still be useful.
>>
>
> Yes, this may happen...or not. And I agree that the Wiki will still be
> useful no matter what, so I don't feel the need for any changes in this
> department. And that's exactly why I'd like to keep it out of this
> discussion, and I think I mentioned this as my clear intention in one of my
> previous mails. So I'd really appreciate if people would stop pulling it in
> again as a topic, it's a discussion for another day.

What discussion? About wiki or about GitHub?


To sum up - I just don't believe that it is possible to create good site,
but I am not against anyone to try. Just saying that selling your design
upfront without implementing it doesn't work, and design matters most.

Current design is good, because it clearly associates with the tool, which
is ancient (mature), but also light and simple. When we have a Python 3
support, crippled down list of options and a GUI with living graph, then I
will be all in for the web redesign, but right now I think that just updating
guidelines and maybe adding Atom if anybody uses that is a way to go.

P.S. I don't know why people are against bikeshedding threads. =)
-- 
anatoly t.