Re: GNUstep web site and marketing thoughts

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

The current website, after the last restructuring, already has two 
parts. Think them of sub-sites.

www.gnustep.org/experience
www.gnustep.org/developers

Surrounded by a common navigation menu which points to the most 
important topic of each, glued together by a homepage and common project 
stuff, e.g. a single download page, a single bug report, single github link.
They have a common style and graphic language.
But e.g.  most screenshots and examples are concentrated in the 
experience part

I have not completed the split perfectly yet, so e.g. experience has no 
index.html page, while developers is self-contained.
The developers part, as I have written, lacks content in terms of 
introduction, interest points and much more, it is essentially full of 
gaps which doesn't make it appreciable. It also makes it difficult to 
make a proper index.

Experience is for the end-user, but also for somebody interested in the 
surrounding concept of GNUstep (read further below).


Damianos Sidiropoulos wrote:
> GNUstep as a framework has an extremely rich set of tools in addition 
> to the classes.
> If web properties were separated between a developer web site and an 
> end user facing web site for a future desktop, there are a few benefits.
>
> - Each website has a distinct target audience
> - Each website will have it's own home page tailored to the needs of 
> their target audience
> - It eliminates end users navigating to pages that are not relevant to 
> them

This can be argued. Each reference has its main reference. But I 
imagine, and many other suggested too, that there is cross-reference.
A user might have curiosity to see how things are done. Maybe not APIs, 
but e.g. check for platforms, operating system support and other tech 
data before delving in and deciding.
A developer might want to see some apps, tools and generally be 
interested what it comes out.

You (and others) think too much of GNUstep core as an agnostic portable 
framework, for Cocoa porting.
But if we look it as a way to develop GNU applications, then we want the 
developer to be interested in the "experience" created. E.g. maybe he 
wants to develop an application and so is interested in the ecosystem. 
Or maybe he ends up just with a new inspector module or preference pane 
module, because the rest of the application is already there. It would 
answer the question "what can I do?" and "where do I fit in"?

I see potentially quite some cross-interest. Then, of course,it depends 
on the approach of the user and person.

> - This opens the opportunity to actually have multiple implementations 
> down the road. NEXT style, Modern style, phone, tablet etc

I don't see how this fits the split-site reasoning. A style could be of 
interest both to the end-user.

For this reason I have prepared e.g. a split in the theme pages - 
although the content is missing.
E.g. for the user you explain what a Theme can do: change colors, change 
icons but also change UXP predicate.
For a developer you want to explain how to make a theme, what can be 
done. But if he doesn't see the user part, he misses the background.

> - There is more than enough content to justify a dedicated GNUstep 
> developer focused site.
>
> Apple themselves have multiple implementations/platforms. They also 
> have separate web sites for end users and developers. This is not by 
> accident and likely for the same reasons I stated above.

Apple has much more, it has a hole operating system, but also hardware, 
services, it has a plethora of things.
I can find it also quite confusing. Completely different download paths, 
for example.
And it has a lot of duplication, check iOS (why isn't it iPhoneOS?) and 
iPadOS and they duplicate lots of bla bla about the same framework, 
since they are so similar.

Then it gets better again with documentation, where, at the end, you 
have one documentation per kit, if you know. We have that, but we lack 
the surrounding  navigation glue, we can fix that.
e.g.:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/pdfkit
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit

There is no "cocoa" and now the can of worms open, marketing name over 
effective Kits.


Wein GNUstep, right now, have 3 categories, in my opinion. Frameworks 
(core and not), developer tools, user applications. No hardware, no N 
versions of OS to sell...

Riccardo