5:10 a.m.
On 24/06/10 22:20, Karsten Wade wrote:
While I've been waiting to see how the Zikula deployment went
with
Fedora Insight, we've finally seen a better update to
docs.fedoraproject.org by using the native Publican site building
tools. I've waited to push forward with a CMS solution for Fedora
Docs until we had a working solution to design against.
While Publican gives us a way to build a nicely organized tree of
content, it doesn't give other capabilities. I don't know of any
plans to include this sort of thing in Publican natively:
* Ability to trigger (re)builds from source repositories via a webUI.
* Workflow control, either by group (writers, editors, publishers), or
specific roles like that but per document (I can write this one, I
can edit yours, and I can push hers to publish after you edit it.)
* WYSIWYG editor for DocBook XML from source repository.
Basically, we still have very high barriers to move from "edit stuff
on the wiki" to "manage a full guide on DocBook XML." The main
purpose for a CMS is to get the ability to publish and tweak
docs.fedoraproject.org out of the hands of a very few, very busy
people, and in to the hands of just about anyone that this team wants
to authorize to do work there.
Talking in the meeting yesterday, I threw out some ideas around this
and agreed to bring those here. I'm still interested in helping drive
a CMS-like project for Docs.
So I'll throw out a proposal to get us started. This proposal exists
partially because of our commitment to using Publican to publish.
Another option is to use Publican only to generate documents, which
are then loaded and versioned in a CMS e.g. Zikula or Drupal. Working
under this other option would be more like the CMS experience others
have -- you either work in the native editor, or you upload documents
you created elsewhere.
== Docs CMS ==
=== Terms ===
* Publican is a command-line toolchain for building books as HTML,
PDF, Epub, Text, etc. and publishing them to a static website with
a navigation sidebar. It uses books written in DocBook XML that
exist as installable RPM packages.
* Beacon is a wysiwyg, webUI editor that has been extended to
support DocBook XML editing.
* Fedora Hosted (fh.o) is a hosting solution that is the source
repository for Fedora Docs. Books primarily use Subversion or git
as source control manager (SCM).
* WebUI is a generic term for the web user interface that we have to
write or configure to wrap around and perform certain functions
for this CMS. For example, it can present a button to a person
with publishing privileges, when pressed triggers of a Publican
build on the backend. This webUI could be custom code written in
Python and TurboGears, or it could be Drupal with a few custom
modules.
* A reader has the ability to read the website anonymously. No
credentials are required.
* A writer belongs to a 'doc-writers' group and also belong to the
group associated with each document, e.g. 'gitinstall-guide'.
Being in the 'doc-writers' group is a prerequisite that exposes
the Beacon editor function.
* An editor is the same as a writer, performing a different role in
the process.
* A publisher is a member of the 'doc-publishers' group, which gives
the permission to trigger special functions in the webUI - build a
doc, rebuild a doc, install a doc package, etc.
=== WebUI architecture ===
Functions:
0. Read
1. Write/edit
2. Publish
0. Read
a. Publican produces pages and navigation at docs.fp.org.
i. These pages are static and not wrapped by the webUI.
b. Readers use Publican's navigation to read guides.
1. Write/edit
a. Writer clicks "Check out document for editing" (this is NOT a
locking mechanism.)
i. Clicking check out triggers a 'git clone' of the document
repo.
ii. The cloned git repo is then branched locally to the webUI
server, for example 'git branch quaid-20100224-UUID' with a
short, sequential UUID such as 'AA00'.
iii. Beacon is then opened using the local file check out of the
XML.
iv. Beacon saves work only in the files in the cloned repo. An
added functionality could trigger 'git commit' on save, but
this might cause too many commits without a log message.
v. The writer's training includes knowing to commit on a regular
basis, in a granular fashion, when one or more edit+saves
makes a good bundle for a commit. Clicking on "Commit
changes" opens a log summary window, then a 'git commit -m
"$dump_from_log_summary_window" is done on the local repo.
vi. A writer's session should persist. When the writer returns
and still has local changes committed but not pushed to the
master git repo, the writer is offered those files to
continue work on, or to checkout a different document.
vii. When the writer is done with the writing session, the
writer clicks a "Check in document to main repository".
This triggers a 'git push' to the master repository.
2. Publish
a. Publisher selects a document and version from a
dropdown/checklist menu.
i. This list is generated from installed packages on docs.fp.o,
information extracted using 'rpm' commands.
b. Publisher clicks "Rebuild and publish document."
i. A koji scratchbuild is triggered, which grabs the latest
source from the upstream repository and builds a package.
ii. When the build is done, the package is installed from koji
using yum.
c. Publisher adds a new document to the publish list.
i. Document must exist as package in koji already.
ii. Publisher uses a Moksha widget to identify the meta-package
OR a specific package name and version are supplied
manually.
iii. Package is installed on docs.fedoraproject.org.
iv. Cached list of installed packages is refreshed to update
document and version dropdown/checklist menus.
<eof>
- Karsten
I don't have the technical know-how to comment on the details of
Karsten's suggestion, however as a relatively new contributor of limited
technical abilities (arguably the kind of user we are aiming to attract
with this) I have one or two thoughts:
1. It seems from Karsten's description that there are two things going
on here: a) a system to make it easier for new contributors to write and
edit documents (cloning repos, editing the files, pushing the edits back
to the repos), and b) a system to make it easier to publish completed
documents to the web. A web CMS might be able to tick both of these
boxes - or it might be more appropriate (and less work) to use a
separate tool for each.
2. Any user wanting to get involved in the Docs Project is going to have
to learn new skills, new ways of thinking and working - and this is a
good thing. However, if the learning curve is too steep, or even appears
so to a potential new contributor, they might be put off. So I guess
anything we can do to take advantage of new contributors' existing
skills and experience could make the learning process easier. A lot of
new contributors might not have had previous experience in using
command-line tools to build marked-up documents from remote repositories
- but they might have used a simple web CMS to publish their blog
articles. A familiar working environment could go a long way to reducing
the trepidation of learning new skills.
Just my two pence!
Nathan