Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:02:24 -0600 (CST) From: Matt Newville
Could this FAQ sufficiently fill the role you're thinking of?
Not precisely what I had in mind, its better. Would it be possible to add links from the faq to threads in the archived mailing list? This way somone (anyone) can add important mailing list discussions to the faq without re-typing a whole bunch of stuff. Peter ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: www-mail.usyd.edu.au
On Wednesday 28 January 2004 03:35 am, Peter Southon wrote:
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:02:24 -0600 (CST) From: Matt Newville
Could this FAQ sufficiently fill the role you're thinking of?
Not precisely what I had in mind, its better. Would it be possible to add links from the faq to threads in the archived mailing list? This way somone (anyone) can add important mailing list discussions to the faq without re-typing a whole bunch of stuff.
Every entry in the FAQ server that Matt set up is editable by anyone who looks at it. Thus, links can be added by anyone who so desires. This is not to say that an htdig-style index would not be useful (clearly it would). But, between the software, the documentation, and the web sites, Matt does a lot. I think the proper response to Matt's announcement of the world-editable FAQ server would have been something more along the lines of: "Excellent! That kicks ass, Matt! Now everyone can contribute to the challanging yet extremely important problem of documenting all this excellent software." B -- Bruce Ravel ----------------------------------- ravel@phys.washington.edu Code 6134, Building 3, Room 222 Naval Research Laboratory phone: (1) 202 767 5947 Washington DC 20375, USA fax: (1) 202 767 1697 NRL Synchrotron Radiation Consortium (NRL-SRC) Beamlines X11a, X11b, X23b National Synchrotron Light Source Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973 My homepage: http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel EXAFS software: http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel/software/exafs/
I have been reading the posts and it seems that there might be some automated tools to do what is proposed with the mailing lists. If anyone wants to see how this could work, just check out the Debian Linux mail archives. THese are threaded and webified and made searchable. THe programs required to do this include "mhonarc", "procmail" and "list-archives". If this is of interest I can look into it more deeply and see how it might be done for the ifeffit list. http://lists.debian.org/ http://lists.debian.org/search.html Carlo On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Bruce Ravel wrote:
On Wednesday 28 January 2004 03:35 am, Peter Southon wrote:
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:02:24 -0600 (CST) From: Matt Newville
Could this FAQ sufficiently fill the role you're thinking of?
Not precisely what I had in mind, its better. Would it be possible to add links from the faq to threads in the archived mailing list? This way somone (anyone) can add important mailing list discussions to the faq without re-typing a whole bunch of stuff.
Every entry in the FAQ server that Matt set up is editable by anyone who looks at it. Thus, links can be added by anyone who so desires. This is not to say that an htdig-style index would not be useful (clearly it would). But, between the software, the documentation, and the web sites, Matt does a lot. I think the proper response to Matt's announcement of the world-editable FAQ server would have been something more along the lines of: "Excellent! That kicks ass, Matt! Now everyone can contribute to the challanging yet extremely important problem of documenting all this excellent software."
-- Carlo U. Segre -- Professor of Physics Associate Dean for Special Projects, Graduate College Illinois Institute of Technology Voice: 312.567.3498 Fax: 312.567.3494 segre@agni.phys.iit.edu http://www.iit.edu/~segre
Hi Peter, On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Peter Southon wrote:
Could this FAQ sufficiently fill the role you're thinking of?
Not precisely what I had in mind, its better.
Maybe you could explain what you do have in mind?? I think you're asking for some sort of indexed searchable 'knowledge base' that's slightly different from the mailing list and from the FAQ. Can you point to an example or a technology of what you'd like? I definitely like the idea of making the mail list archives searchable. This should happen sometime soon. How long it takes and how good it ends up depends on what technologies are used. There are several to choose from. (Thanks for the links, Carlo!! The debian search looks great -- I'll look into that and htdig.) I'd also like to include the woefully small 'script cookbook' in this discussion as well. I'll work to move those scripts to the FAQ and the distributed examples, and abandon the existing cookbook once that happens. That way, others could post worked examples too. A goal for me is to make it easier for people other than me to post information and contribute examples and code. The new FAQ should help (assuming it gets used), but it is not a complete solution.
Would it be possible to add links from the faq to threads in the archived mailing list? This way somone (anyone) can add important mailing list discussions to the faq without re-typing a whole bunch of stuff.
Yes, links to the FAQ can be put in an email. Here's a link to one of the FAQ entries: http://cars9.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/ifeffit/faqwiz?req=show&file=faq01.002.htp It's sort of ugly, but you can just cut-and-paste from the URL of the FAQ. To figure that out by hand, the 'faq01.002.htp' part there ^^ ^^^ at the end means 'Section 01, Question 002'. FAQ entries are easy to add and edit. One could cut-and-paste content from an archived mail message into a FAQ entry. Entries can be in plain text or HTML. Even in plain-text entries, URLs in the message will get translated to a web link. And since each message in the mailing list archives has its own URL, the FAQ can include a link to a specific email. In that way the FAQ and the list archive can easily point back and forth to one another. Once this message gets archived, I'll edit the above FAQ to point back to it. --Matt
participants (4)
-
Bruce Ravel -
Carlo U. Segre -
Matt Newville -
Peter Southon