Re: LilyPond Website Work

[Carl Peterson]

On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Phil Holmes <address@hidden> wrote:

My recommendations would be:
1. Use a consistent URL for the latest stable version of LilyPond
documentation. That way web searches and other pages across the web link
to the latest version instead of ancient versions of the documentation.

Unfortunately, this is not possible.  The released stable version is currently 2.16.  However, it seems that a number of packagers are significantly behind this, using 2.14.  We can't link to a single stable version when there are 2 or more.

I think the suggestion is basically (until 2.18 is released) to use the .htaccess file to redirect

http://lilypond.org/doc/stable --> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.16

http://lilypond.org/doc/dev --> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.17

When 2.18 is released, then the .htaccess file is modified to redirect

http://lilypond.org/doc/stable --> http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.16

Since this would be defined on the .htaccess, should be transparent to the user and requires no duplication of files.

If you want to get really picky, there are still things I've seen using 2.12. I don't know that means we have keep track of what versions are packaged with what. After all, if someone posts something here that doesn't use 2.16 or 2.17, almost uniformly, it will be strongly suggested to that individual that they ought to update to the latest.

 

2. On old or unstable documentation include a link to the equivalent
page in the stable version of the documentation.

Generally, this does work - replacing the version number in the URL brings up an older version of the manual.  If it is a 404, it must be that this page did not exist in the old version.

If you're using an outdated version, it might make sense to download the appropriate PDF manuals.

I believe the suggestion is to go in the other direction---if the search happens to drop you into an older version, provide a link to the most recent.

The problem here, I think, is technical. Short of .htaccess or some other server-side wrapper (similar to what many free web hosting providers do) that will put a banner saying, "This is not the latest version. Click here to go to...", because of the nature of updating the website, I don't know how practical this is, to go through and recompile all the prior versions of documentation to provide convenient links.