Re: [Axiom-developer] Front page esthetic

[Ralf Hemmecke]

> > (Could one have a table of contents at the top of that page?)

> What did you have in mind? Table of Contents for the contents
> of the page or something more inclusive?

I have used <h1> and <h2> to structure the page. Since I consider that 
page like a (very short) paper, I would like to see the headlines appear 
either at the top of the page or on the left hand side (without typing 
more myself). We already know that Zwiki handles the first paragraph of 
the page as an abstract that is used also in other places like

http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/SiteIndex

Unfortunately, that "abstract" thing is not/was not know to many 
wiki-contributors. It should be more apparent how to structure a page.
One suggestion from me would be: If a new page is created, a 
StructuredText-Template with 2 or 3 sections and subsections is 
generated, so that one remembers, how to structure the page. If I look 
at wikipedia, they also don't just have random looking pages, but it 
looks they have somethink like a "corporate design" and that even with 
thousands of different people contributing.

> > (4) Browse sources online

> The current "Online sources" are actually pamphlet files implemented
> as wiki pages. Some details are provided here
>
> http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/210

Aha!!! Then it looks to me that this is ANOTHER repository that can even 
be freely distributed too. Actually, I think that is a great idea, but 
obviously, it is not really apparent that one might change Axiom. And it 
is also not clear, what the process is to make changes to that 
WikiRepository (Is this now a Bronze = testing repository? Or would that 
be too much confusion?). In fact, that repository should appear on the 
http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/SandboxAxiomSources site at the very 
bottom, right? Who is maintaining and testing contributions to it? 
Should we have a branch at SVN that is in sync with the Wiki-repository?

> The 'axiom--test--1' pages correspond to what the Axiom sources
> were about last August, 2005. There have been some online updates -
> especially those required to allow Axiom Wiki to generate hypertex
> dvi and pdf files, but none of these changes have been propagated
> back to the original sources (either gold or silver). I used a
> different name 'axiom--test--1' as a reminder that this source
> is not either of these.

OK the name is clear now to me, but as I said, it should be explained 
somewhere, what happens with contributions and how they might make their 
way to silver and gold. I think it is important to make our development 
process clear to potential contributors. (OK, first, we should come up 
with one.)

> And most ambitiously, one could have an automatic build process
> that built Axiom directly from the current online sources and if
> it was successful, automatically run a series of "test" wiki pages
> containing Axiom commands and expected results.

Very ambitious! Doesn't that cost a lot of server power? And note, you 
expect the user to wait for at least half an hour before the compilation 
is finished. Who is going to wait that long?

> I still think it is rather sexy, but until (or if)
> Axiom developers show more interest in this concept, I am rather
> reluctant to spend more of my time on this experiment.

I don't know exactly, what SCM you have behind axiom--test--1, but I 
guess, it is darcs. Would it be much of an effort to create a branch on 
the SVN archive and keep it in sync with axiom--test--1? Back and forth?
But I see a problem with modifications that break the building process. 
No? Is there currently some connection between the axiom that runs in 
the background of the wiki and axiom--test--1? If not then it would be 
easier to keep the sources in sync.

> But...
>
> There are alternatives for browsing online source code directly
> from source repositories. I have for example also implemented the
> darcsweb cgi script that enables browsing the darcs repository. Go to
>
> http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/MathActionRepository
>
> and click on "browsed online", then click on "axiom--main--1".
>
> The axiom--main--1 darcs repository corresponds to the actual version
> of Axiom running on the axiom-developer.org server that runs Axiom Wiki
> and Axiom Portal. It is currently in synch with the arch axiom--main--1
> repository because I just recently updated the version of Axiom.

Nice. Could you add entries to SandboxAxiomSources. I think we should 
have just ONE page that describes all the different ways to access sources.

However http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/MathActionRepository is 
read-only, so http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/axiom--test--1/FrontPage
is superior, since it allows contributions. We just have to make it obvious.

Ralf