[Axiom-developer] Re: [fricas-devel] Re: Axiom Wiki and Portal are moving

[Bill Page]

On 05 Nov 2007 10:06:09 +0100, Martin Rubey wrote:
> Dear Bill, *
>
> a short answer, since I'm rather busy...
>

Busy is good. :-)

> >
> > Perhaps we could also support some standard versions, e.g.
> >
> >   \begin{axiom}[fricas,1.1]
> >   ...
> >   \end{axiom}
> >
> > Here [...] is an optional parameter. {axiom} by itself would refer to
> > one of the three versions of axiom (no guarantee which one).
> >  {axiom}[open-axiom] would refer to the most recently installed
> > version of open-axiom, etc.
>
> great!
>

Ok, but it will take me some time to get around to implementing this.

> > The problem with the usual "cut-and-paste" method is that I have not
> > found any way to transfer the status and classification field information.
> > Only the text content of the page is visible. Of course it would be
> > possible to set the fields later, but we are talking about nearly 300
> > pages.
>
> I think that would not be too bad, since status is already slightly outdated
> for some bugs and some flavours of axiom, and the classification scheme
> could maybe be simplified.

I think that is true. The trouble of course is that we apparently do
not have anyone with enough time and interest to actually do the
checking of the status and copying of the details.

>
> > An alternative that I haven't checked is using "External Edit". I do
> > not have the external edit feature enabled on my workstation so I
> > cannot easily check. Martin, I think you do use this right?
>
> Not anymore, sorry.
>
> Apart from that, I strongly support Waldek's view of making a more
> or less identical copy first, and polish later - time and interest
> permitting.
>

I would have made an identical copy if it had been easy and did not
conflict with the desire to upgrade the software. I considered that
the software upgrade had to have priority because the newer version of
ZWiki is much more spam-resistant than the old one, plus now that we
are up-to-date with a standard version of ZWiki without any serious
customization, it will be easily remain current.

I still have not heard any convincing reason from either you or Waldek
why you think copy the entire contents of the old site is important.
As for "polishing later", given the past history of this web site and
the number and kind of past contributions I am quite certain that
later would equate with never in this case. :-( It seems that no one
has either the time or the interest even to copy a few selected pages.

Given that almost all of the visitors to the site are there only to
read about Axiom, I think the quality of the pages is of much greater
importance than the quantity.

Also although I would not want to presume on how he should spend his
time on Axiom, I think it would be a serious waste of Waldek's time to
hack together a Perl script just to do a dumb-and-blind copy of the
old contents to the new. Since the entire application is written in
Python, if any new code was to be written for this purpuse it would
make better sense to actually use Python. Further, there already is a
very good program (ZSyncer) whose sole purpose is to make it easy to
keep two or more websites in synchronized by copying pages in both
directions as needed. (We used this program to keep the axiom.risc
site synchronized with the axiom-developer site before the computer at
Risc had to be re-built.) Unfortunately this program is not capable of
dealing with the change in the page type metadata between the old and
new ZWiki versions. *If* I was motivated to try to copying everything
from the old to new sites, then I would probably devote the effort to
solving this problem by modifying ZSyncer.

> Also, I would very much like to see the old wiki read only meanwhile.
>

I'll make this change now, but of course the rate of change of the
site is very very low in any case.

> I won't have any time for serious axiom stuff for a while.  And even then,
> I'd prefer to work on the species project.  But the wiki cannot wait for such
> a long time, it is used by too many people!
>

I guess that is a problem. I also do not have enough time and would
now prefer to use the time I do have available for Axiom actually
using Axiom for my research. We badly need someone new to come along
who has some interested in the web sites.

> A final suggestion: would it be possible to map
>
>     http://axiom-wiki.newsynthesis.org
>
> to
>
>     http://axiom.newsynthesis.org
>
> I need short names for the next axiom workshop :-)
>

The url

  http://axiom.newsynthesis.org

already exists and points to a provisional site-summary page with
links to both axiom-wiki and axiom-portal as well as the main pages
for the forks of Axiom. Rather than making 'axiom.newsythesis.org'
point to the same place as 'axiom-wiki' I would be happy for
suggestions on how to improve this page.

About the next axiom workshop: Is there anything planned to coincide
with the upcoming ISSAC meeting (July 2008?) at Risc? At the last
Aldor workshop there were some tentative plans to schedule the next
Aldor workshop to occur at this time and place. I will be coming to
this meeting if at all possible, so perhaps we will finally meet in
person. :-)

Regards,
Bill Page.