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Gilles VINCENT | 14 Jun 10:20
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external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

Hello, 


I started a discussion in the list spip-dev, and would like to have your opinion : 
(automatic translation here : http://tinyurl.com/lmeqo7)

This was in reaction to a discussion about to name to give to a new functionality in SPIP : themes in the private area.

In your opinion, which impression of SPIP can be perceived by non-french speaking developers ?

-- especially you may feel concerned by this message from Klauss, who is German, http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.spip.devel/53825 --
(automatic translation here : http://tinyurl.com/mvqfyj)


Thanks for reacting,



.Gilles
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Thomas Sutton | 15 Jun 04:30

Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

Hi all,

On 14/06/2009, at 4:20 PM, Gilles VINCENT wrote:

This was in reaction to a discussion about to name to give to a new functionality in SPIP : themes in the private area.

In your opinion, which impression of SPIP can be perceived by non-french speaking developers ?

I didn't read the linked messages too closely (Google translate kills gmane's interface and doesn't translate all that well :-] ) but I have a few comments about the topic in general.

There have been a few mentions of the fun side and personality of SPIP which sounds great, but comes as a surprise to me: I didn't realise that there is any such theme to the SPIP terminology. By the time we see most of these concepts, whatever humour or fun there is in the French terminology has been translated away. The only difficulty I see here is where the "official" SPIP translation differs from the "normal", e.g., English name for something. The skeletons vs. templates thing is a good example.

I'd like to reiterate the point that Heiko Jansen made: that the state of the (developer) documentation makes SPIP amongst the least accessible Open Source projects I've used. I've been using SPIP full-time for nearly two years now, and frequently doing "new" things. All too often I find myself tracing PHP code because the documentation just isn't there, even in French! 

The situation *is* improving, but there is still a long way to go. Just compare <http://api.drupal.org/> and <http://doc.spip.org/> to see the difference in the depth and coverage of the Drupal and SPIP documentation. I'd love it if SPIP had such complete documentation in French or English or, even better, both. Without it, those of us trying to learn about SPIP are flying blind. This is a real barrier to entry for those who want to contribute to SPIP, French-speaking or not. In particular, some sort of architectural overview of SPIP would be very much appreciated by people like me, who want to start investigating and modifying SPIP's internals (I, for one, am interested in the template parser and compiler and the "typographical shortcuts" processor).

Another point, raised by Martín, is that some, possibly a lot, of the documentation seems to be out of date and incomplete. Just look at the "anti-doublons" pattern that Fil described on this list last week. It is mentioned on the <http://spip-contrib.net/> page that Gilles linked to, but to actual find that page you'd nearly need to know the answer already. <http://programmer.spip.org/> has the potential to address at least some of these gaps, but there is a lot left to be translated and it will never be the complete "reference" that, in my opinion, SPIP does need and that <http://spip.net/> currently fails to be.

To contradict him though, "translating" the documentation has only three prerequisites: that you know your own language, that you know the topic, and that you can use Babelfish or Google Translate. *Anyone* can help translate documentation and everyone is encouraged to jump-in, it's easy and you'll almost certainly learn something, either some French or some SPIP or both, I know I have! I'm sure that Gilles or Fil or someone will be able to point anyone who wants to help in the right direction (We could use some help translating <http://programmer.spip.org/> into English!)

The idea was raised before of an English SPIP site and I think that that is entirely the wrong direction to go in. Rather than fragmenting the community and documentation even more, perhaps we should think about going in the other direction: concentrating effort and information on fewer sites rather than more?

Finally, from speaking from my own point of view, I think that the "documentation issue" really is one of SPIP's key drawbacks at the moment. We'd love to use SPIP for all our projects (except where it isn't appropriate, of course) but we've had a number of projects where we could not, primarily because of the documentation: clients simply cannot invest large amounts of money in projects without knowing that their investment does not depend on a single relatively small company (How many companies out there are using SPIP? Is there a "commercial SPIP users group"? Perhaps we should start one?).

To sum up: we need better documentation (in French or English or both) than we have. It should be complete and up-to-date and should make it much easier than it currently is to learn about SPIP and begin using and contributing. Without it, the community can grow only so much.

I feel a little presumptuous asking, but do the SPIP developers have any requests or suggestions? How can we, the community, help them to make SPIP, the documentation and the community better?

Regards,

Thomas Sutton

Web Developer
bouncingorange
graphic + web design
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klaus++ | 15 Jun 09:18
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Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

Dear Thomas,

thank you for pointig out so precisely the main issue for the further 
development of SPIP. It makes me feel better that the large number of 
hours I used to figure out (mostly perfect) solutions are not so much 
due to my lack of programming skills but rather a common phenomenon.

I have been usin SPIP from it's very beginning and still admire the well 
focused concepts behind but I have had a hard time recently trying to 
follow the developments an the core side. At this moment they are likely 
to do another great job which we all have been asking for : they are 
splitting up the code into a real core which drives plugins providing 
the functions we arer using. But in the same time I feel a bit unhappy 
about this happening without being documented right from the beginning 
of this step.

Although one of my main arguments for using SPIP is it's independence 
from institutional or commercial influences (yes, it still is a very 
political project) this seems to be one of the reasons for our problem : 
the way the SPIP community works does not follow the necessities of a 
professional project and therefore does not easily decide to adopt a 
mature client-centered attitude.

We shall discuss this intensively at the Avignon meeting and I am 
optimistic about the results.

Sincerely,
klaus++

Thomas Sutton schrieb:

*



> Hi all,
> 
> On 14/06/2009, at 4:20 PM, Gilles VINCENT wrote:
> 
>> This was in reaction to a discussion about to name to give to a new 
>> functionality in SPIP : themes in the private area.
>>
>> In your opinion, which impression of SPIP can be perceived by 
>> non-french speaking developers ?
> 
> I didn't read the linked messages too closely (Google translate kills 
> gmane's interface and doesn't translate all that well :-] ) but I have a 
> few comments about the topic in general.
> 
> There have been a few mentions of the fun side and personality of SPIP 
> which sounds great, but comes as a surprise to me: I didn't realise that 
> there is any such theme to the SPIP terminology. By the time we see most 
> of these concepts, whatever humour or fun there is in the French 
> terminology has been translated away. The only difficulty I see here is 
> where the "official" SPIP translation differs from the "normal", e.g., 
> English name for something. The skeletons vs. templates thing is a good 
> example.
> 
> I'd like to reiterate the point that Heiko Jansen made: that the state 
> of the (developer) documentation makes SPIP amongst the least accessible 
> Open Source projects I've used. I've been using SPIP full-time for 
> nearly two years now, and frequently doing "new" things. All too often I 
> find myself tracing PHP code because the documentation just isn't there, 
> even in French!
> 
> The situation *is* improving, but there is still a long way to go. Just 
> compare <http://api.drupal.org/> and <http://doc.spip.org/> to see the 
> difference in the depth and coverage of the Drupal and SPIP 
> documentation. I'd love it if SPIP had such complete documentation in 
> French or English or, even better, both. Without it, those of us trying 
> to learn about SPIP are flying blind. This is a real barrier to entry 
> for those who want to contribute to SPIP, French-speaking or not. In 
> particular, some sort of architectural overview of SPIP would be very 
> much appreciated by people like me, who want to start investigating and 
> modifying SPIP's internals (I, for one, am interested in the template 
> parser and compiler and the "typographical shortcuts" processor).
> 
> Another point, raised by Martín, is that some, possibly a lot, of the 
> documentation seems to be out of date and incomplete. Just look at the 
> "anti-doublons" pattern that Fil described on this list last week. It is 
> mentioned on the <http://spip-contrib.net/> page that Gilles linked to, 
> but to actual find that page you'd nearly need to know the answer 
> already. <http://programmer.spip.org/> has the potential to address at 
> least some of these gaps, but there is a lot left to be translated and 
> it will never be the complete "reference" that, in my opinion, SPIP does 
> need and that <http://spip.net/> currently fails to be.
> 
> To contradict him though, "translating" the documentation has only three 
> prerequisites: that you know your own language, that you know the topic, 
> and that you can use Babelfish or Google Translate. *Anyone* can help 
> translate documentation and everyone is encouraged to jump-in, it's easy 
> and you'll almost certainly learn something, either some French or some 
> SPIP or both, I know I have! I'm sure that Gilles or Fil or someone will 
> be able to point anyone who wants to help in the right direction (We 
> could use some help translating <http://programmer.spip.org/> into 
> English!)
> 
> The idea was raised before of an English SPIP site and I think that that 
> is entirely the wrong direction to go in. Rather than fragmenting the 
> community and documentation even more, perhaps we should think about 
> going in the other direction: concentrating effort and information on 
> fewer sites rather than more?
> 
> Finally, from speaking from my own point of view, I think that the 
> "documentation issue" really is one of SPIP's key drawbacks at the 
> moment. We'd love to use SPIP for all our projects (except where it 
> isn't appropriate, of course) but we've had a number of projects where 
> we could not, primarily because of the documentation: clients simply 
> cannot invest large amounts of money in projects without knowing that 
> their investment does not depend on a single relatively small company 
> (How many companies out there are using SPIP? Is there a "commercial 
> SPIP users group"? Perhaps we should start one?).
> 
> To sum up: we need better documentation (in French or English or both) 
> than we have. It should be complete and up-to-date and should make it 
> much easier than it currently is to learn about SPIP and begin using and 
> contributing. Without it, the community can grow only so much.
> 
> I feel a little presumptuous asking, but do the SPIP developers have any 
> requests or suggestions? How can we, the community, help them to make 
> SPIP, the documentation and the community better?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Thomas Sutton
> 
> Web Developer
> bouncingorange
> graphic + web design
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> spip-en@... - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
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Thomas Sutton | 15 Jun 10:15

Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

Hi Klaus,

On 15/06/2009, at 3:18 PM, klaus++ wrote:

> Dear Thomas,
>
> thank you for pointig out so precisely the main issue for the  
> further development of SPIP. It makes me feel better that the large  
> number of hours I used to figure out (mostly perfect) solutions are  
> not so much due to my lack of programming skills but rather a  
> common phenomenon.

I have spent a large amount of time learning how, e.g., the plug-in  
system works, largely by trial-and-error, reading the code, and this  
mailing list. I'm starting to see that pay off now as I help my  
colleagues learn how it works and can have them take over maintenance  
of our internal code, but it was a very long hard struggle.

And now I have to re-learn parts of it for SPIP 2.0, a task which I'm  
not anticipating.

> I have been usin SPIP from it's very beginning and still admire the  
> well focused concepts behind but I have had a hard time recently  
> trying to follow the developments an the core side. At this moment  
> they are likely to do another great job which we all have been  
> asking for : they are splitting up the code into a real core which  
> drives plugins providing the functions we arer using. But in the  
> same time I feel a bit unhappy about this happening without being  
> documented right from the beginning of this step.

I have never bothered trying to follow core developments. It is  
useless to follow the development without knowing the existing  
system, and the only ways I can see to learn some parts of it is  
either flood this list with hundreds of questions or spend some days  
or weeks reading the code. Frankly, neither is appealing.

I'd like to know more about SPIP and the way it works, but it's just  
too hard at the moment and my boss can't afford to pay me to sit here  
and learn it. :-)

> Although one of my main arguments for using SPIP is it's  
> independence from institutional or commercial influences (yes, it  
> still is a very political project) this seems to be one of the  
> reasons for our problem : the way the SPIP community works does not  
> follow the necessities of a professional project and therefore does  
> not easily decide to adopt a mature client-centered attitude.

My comments were not to say that I think SPIP's development should be  
driven by commercial issues, but I don't think that these issues are  
particular to commercial projects; they apply to *all* projects,  
especially large ones. SPIP is clearly of a size (about 16 MB, though  
 > 8 MB is translations) where it is unfeasible for a newcomer to  
learn everything they need to from the code.

> We shall discuss this intensively at the Avignon meeting and I am  
> optimistic about the results.

Good luck! Any improvement at all would be a good thing from my point  
of view.

Regards,

Thomas Sutton

Web Developer
bouncingorange
graphic + web design
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klaus++ | 16 Jun 02:07
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Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

Hi Thomas,

> My comments were not to say that I think SPIP's development should be 
> driven by commercial issues, but I don't think that these issues are 
> particular to commercial projects; they apply to *all* projects, 
> especially large ones.
I agree. Thank you for insisting on this point.

> SPIP is clearly of a size (about 16 MB, though > 
> 8 MB is translations) where it is unfeasible for a newcomer to learn 
> everything they need to from the code.
Therefore we need a well structured documentation. I think we'll dicuss 
this thouroughly.

klaus++
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Marina Moran | 14 Jun 23:28
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Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

Hi Gilles:

The most important points for me were already mentionted. I agree with
Heiko when he says the "internal script" is not the important but the
documentation. He says "...the lack of an consistent documentation for
non-french speaking developers". I am using SPIP since 2 years now,
and I still see the non-french documentation of SPIP as a big
confusing cloud. Of course I dont mention it to people I talk about
the great SPIP... But its something that get me tired... and makes me
waste a lot of time and effort. When I started, I dindt get away with
this mainly because the spanish list is so great, that I always have
an answer there.

And of course we are free to translate, but as Martin said is a
terrible effort, and there is no enough time neither people able to do
it... It would be so great to have everything in English at the day is
coming out the documentation.

For me on the other hand the idea of French is very "romantic" but
this is a reality: All my colegues can read and interpret technical
English with no problem at all.

Hope you get my idea. And thanks for your interest!

Marina

On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 5:20 AM, Gilles
VINCENT<gilles.vincent@...> wrote:

*



> Hello,
> I started a discussion in the list spip-dev, and would like to have your
> opinion :
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.spip.devel/53775
> (automatic translation here : http://tinyurl.com/lmeqo7)
> This was in reaction to a discussion about to name to give to a new
> functionality in SPIP : themes in the private area.
> In your opinion, which impression of SPIP can be perceived by non-french
> speaking developers ?
> -- especially you may feel concerned by this message from Klauss, who is
> German, http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.spip.devel/53825 --
> (automatic translation here : http://tinyurl.com/mvqfyj)
>
> Thanks for reacting,
>
>
> .Gilles
>
> _______________________________________________
> spip-en@... - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
>
>


--

-- 
Marina
www.artenqn.com.ar
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Martín Gaitán | 14 Jun 16:43
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Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

*



On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 5:20 AM, Gilles VINCENT<gilles.vincent <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> I started a discussion in the list spip-dev, and would like to have your
> opinion :
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.spip.devel/53775
> (automatic translation here : http://tinyurl.com/lmeqo7)
> This was in reaction to a discussion about to name to give to a new
> functionality in SPIP : themes in the private area.
> In your opinion, which impression of SPIP can be perceived by non-french
> speaking developers ?
> -- especially you may feel concerned by this message from Klauss, who is
> German, http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.spip.devel/53825 --
> (automatic translation here : http://tinyurl.com/mvqfyj)
>
> Thanks for reacting,
>
>
> .Gilles


Gilles, thank you very much for stand up to this big problem.

I've left a comment a few days ago, in the article about the new site
'spip-info.net'
http://www.spip-contrib.net/Spip-info#forum417154

As answer, I get a "feel free to translate it". =D

I'm one of the most 'activist' spipers in spip-es (I'm from
Argentina). Altough I've translated (really 'interpreted', with the
help of automatic translators) documentation and contribs in french I
judged very important, this task is not accessible to the most people.
At this moment, the documentation in spanish is really outdated and
messy.

Obviously, the webmasters who know (or suspects) the potential of
spip, make the (big) effort to overpass this obstacle, but I'm sure
there is a lot of developers who stop at the door.

Just make a comparative how many contributors (of themes, plugins, ...
) there is in other projects (Wordpress, drupal, etc). ¿is that
because the quality? Obviously not.

So, my vote is +1 (or +1million if it's possible to vote more than once)

good sunday.
martin.
_______________________________________________
spip-en <at> rezo.net - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
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Valéry | 14 Jun 17:36
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Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

*



Martín Gaitán <gaitan@...> writes:

> I've left a comment a few days ago, in the article about the new site
> 'spip-info.net'
> http://www.spip-contrib.net/Spip-info#forum417154
> 
> As answer, I get a "feel free to translate it". =D


Yes :-)

How is it a wrong answer ? Someone has to do it.

If there are others willing to translate spip-info. I would gladly help from 
French to English, although some language washing maube helpful, but there is a 
need for a community to deal with maintaining a localized version.

About the technical documentation, I think a part of http://programmer.spip.org/ 
has been translated already.

_______________________________________________
spip-en <at> rezo.net - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
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Martín Gaitán | 14 Jun 18:58
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Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

*



On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Valéry<vlentz <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> Martín Gaitán <gaitan@...> writes:
>
>> I've left a comment a few days ago, in the article about the new site
>> 'spip-info.net'
>> http://www.spip-contrib.net/Spip-info#forum417154
>>
>> As answer, I get a "feel free to translate it". =D
>
> Yes :-)
>
> How is it a wrong answer ? Someone has to do it.
>
> If there are others willing to translate spip-info. I would gladly help from
> French to English, although some language washing maube helpful, but there is a
> need for a community to deal with maintaining a localized version.
>
> About the technical documentation, I think a part of http://programmer.spip.org/
> has been translated already.


My comment was not just for (or against) spip-info.

The point is the effort to translate all the documentation from french
is prohibitively huge for people able to do it. The most of
programmers can read technical english but no french, so, altough was
a goal to have the documentation (and all useful information about
spip)  in many language, english would be a good (the best) starting
point.  Moreover, more people could translate from english to any
other language.

And this is not just for documentation: comment code (from trunk,
plugins, templates, etc...) in english would make life easier for all
who wants study, modified or adapts it, which are fundamentals right
of free software.

Of course there is a need for a community involved; that was exactly I
said in the comment of your article. But I think we are leaving out a
big portion of that community.
_______________________________________________
spip-en <at> rezo.net - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
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Heiko Jansen | 14 Jun 11:35
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Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

Hi Gilles,

I developed some websites in Germany with SPIP and I used SPIP because
of its intuitive "Back-Office" - it's well designed and simple to use.
It's build for humans not for IT-professionals... and so after a short
introduction everybody of my customers can work with SPIP and change
the content of their sites.

For me as an foreign developer the language of the internal "script
language" is mostly irrelevant. Well, starting with SPIP you need a
time of familiarisation but then it's okay. You have to learn some
things for every CMS, and so you learn to write BOULCE instead of LOOP
or #TEXTE instead of #TEXT.

More disturbing for me is the lack of an consistent documentation for
non-french speaking developers. Since Version 1.8 SPIP made some very
big steps in the development - e.g. the Plugin-System etc. pp. But the
documentation was not to made these big steps. So the documentation
now is a patchwork with a lot of missing links. So I now that there
are powerful Plugins, but they are not well documented nor they are
translated - so I can't use them, because this is destroying the
easy-to-use-backoffice. I can't explain my customers that their is a
very cool function but only in french...

So - don't get worried about the names of internal scripts - that is
not the problem. The problem is, that the documentation for developers
doesn't made the huge steps of the deveolpment of SPIP: SPIP is like a
TGV and the documantion is more like a 2CV...

Greetings from Bochum
Heiko

2009/6/14 Gilles VINCENT <gilles.vincent@...>:

*



> Hello,
> I started a discussion in the list spip-dev, and would like to have your
> opinion :
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.spip.devel/53775
> (automatic translation here : http://tinyurl.com/lmeqo7)
> This was in reaction to a discussion about to name to give to a new
> functionality in SPIP : themes in the private area.
> In your opinion, which impression of SPIP can be perceived by non-french
> speaking developers ?
> -- especially you may feel concerned by this message from Klauss, who is
> German, http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.spip.devel/53825 --
> (automatic translation here : http://tinyurl.com/mvqfyj)
>
> Thanks for reacting,
>
>
> .Gilles
>
> _______________________________________________
> spip-en@... - http://listes.rezo.net/mailman/listinfo/spip-en
>
>
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