Re: FAQ + new idea

[thi <ttn at revel dot glug dot org>]

   From: Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj@mdj.nada.kth.se>
   Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 22:00:06 +0200

   However, there is also a disadvantage in that it becomes more
   difficult for the reader to browse quickly through the FAQ and to use
   "Find" in his browser to look for individual words.

   Some time in the future it might therefore be a good idea to try to
   include the actual texts in the FAQ document.  (It would probably be
   a good idea to retain the links.)

yes that is a good idea.  my guess is that as people want to see more
text, diffs will appear in my mailbox.  this interaction / maintenance
model is how the faq-o-matic will eventually work, btw.

writing summaries is an art and a skill that i hope those who are not
overly code-inclined will see as a good way to contribute nonetheless.
a good faq entry saves many people much time.

   One of our current problems is that there is a lot of interesting
   contributions on the Guile list (such as Ian's recent infix
   arithmetic parser module) but still no system for sharing Guile
   source.

   Although this is something we're working on, one idea could be
   meanwhile to maintain a document, structured the same way as your
   FAQ, with pointers to messages on the list contributing interesting
   Guile things.  This is similar in mind to the projects list, but not
   the same, since this new list would simply be a kind of summary of
   worthwhile contributions for later reference.

you mean there's no system apart from this (and the apparently neglected
guile-sources) mailing list, i assume.

i suppose i should let everyone know GUMM development status at this
time.  i'm currently using a modified guile-pg-0.07 to transition the
guile-projects alist-based database into postgresql (however, people
should not feel inhibited from sending project updates -- the transition
is being done by a program, not manually).  this is a one-time event,
but the by-product is that guile-projects management code will be
generalized (and released as 2.x) to be able to implement GUMM also.
(to be honest, all this is just an excuse to play w/ guile, and avoid
html as much as possible. :-)

but back to the simple summary of contributions suggestion: i think a
better way to implement this suggestion would be to encourage people,
when they post sources, to cc guile-sources@gnu.org and then make the
archive of that list available from the guile web pages.  perhaps that
list can be delegated to cygnus for handling in the same excellent way
they handle this list.

i suggest this alternate approach also because it implies little work
for me so that i can get to goops scm->C translation, sooner.

thi