[M3devel] bad web pages

[Olaf Wagner]

No offense taken. Any volunteers for working on improving the
web presentation are welcome.

The official domains are opencm3.net and modula3.org.
Everything else should be left to Elego.

I'd really appreciate if someone with the appropriate knowledge
in design would step in. I don't think anybody is interested in
doing that, though. I'd say that 99% of what is there has been
structured and presented by me in the simplest way just to publish
the available information at all.

Some people have made concrete change suggestions, and I'm usually
trying to follow and integrate them.

Let's not try a complete overhaul for this release. Just fix the most
blatant errors and no-gos. Everything else will take months.

The releng pages have been open for discussion here for several weeks
now; they are still not public (i.e. not linked to the other pages)
of opencm3.net.

Suggestions may also simply be checked in (everything is in the repo),
preferrably on a branch, so that everyone can have a look at it.
It's also much more effective. I haven't got the time to process
half a dozen of new and probably conflicting suggestions.

What's not open for discussion in my eyes any more is the structure
of the release archives. We'll just use what is described there,
or it will take months till we get anywhere. It will also be the
last time that I coordinate a CM3 release. Everyone around me is
already complaining :-(

Olaf

Quoting Jay K <jay.krell at cornell.edu>:

> [
> sorry if this too rude.
> I've been avoiding saying anything because I haven't done anything   
> to fix it and because my complaints are a little vague. But I am   
> sure there is something significant here. When something bugs I   
> often wait and see if it stops bugging me, maybe I overreact   
> initially. But this has continued to bug me.
> ]
>
>
> I'm sorry, but our web pages are not very good.
> Too much information, too many details presented too early, hard to   
> see the little a new person needs.
>
>
> I don't have the patience right now to go into detail, but starting here:
>
>
> http://www.opencm3.net/releng/
>
>
> Much too much stuff.
>
>
> Beginners need to quickly get to a download, and quickly have hello   
> world working, and then a link to the language and library   
> documentation.
>
>
> Telling them about packages early is not useful.
> Having so many options as to what to download is not useful.
>   I admit even my min vs. std separation is not great.
>   It is embarassing either way -- either you are a huge download or   
> you have pitiful little functionality. Though libm3 is not exactly   
> pitiful I gather.
>
>
> They don't care much about quake.
> Just give one or two quick tutorial examples:
>   - here is how you build a program from multiple source files
>   - optionally here is how you build a library (obviously this   
> information must be provided, but not super early)
>
>
> My other complaint is that I go here:
>
>
> http://modula3.elegosoft.com/
>
>
> and there is a link "WWW service for CM3 and PM3"
>
> Huh? WWW Service? Aren't I already there?
> Perhaps I just pick a bad starting point?
>
>
> Is the distinction Modula-3 the language vs. the two distributions   
> CM3 and PM3?
> Maybe we should ignore PM3 and equate Modula-3 with CM3, and somehow  
>  merge this stuff?
>
>
> The package download service? Does anyone use it?
>
>
> The problem, the reason I don't rewrite stuff and am just a lazy   
> complainer, is that in total there's a bunch of stuff in there. The   
> way it is laid out is bad. It used to take me a while to find stuff.
>
>
> I can't be very concrete now..maybe the organization has changed..I   
> thought it was the stuff you have to scroll to the bottom for, but I  
>  don't use that anymore.
>
>
> One concrete thing is that   
> http://modula3.elegosoft.com/cm3/about-cm3.html#if-changes doesn't   
> need to be so
> visible, it's spot could be used for something of more general use.
> I realize that it was more valuable when 5.1 was new, and then its   
> value degraded gradually.
> It depends how much there is out there that works with 3.x?4.x?PM3   
> and doesn't work with CM3?
>
>
>
> Perhaps a very big part of the answer here is deb packages?
>  - add such and such line to whatever file
>  - apt-get modula3-min or modula3-all, or whatever you want in-between?
>  - apt-whatever -list modula3-*?
>
>
> I guess we'd have to call them cm3 not modula3.
>
>
>  - Jay
>



-- 
Olaf Wagner -- elego Software Solutions GmbH
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