Interesting proposal - but why this construction on top of a revision control system .. ?

2015-01-05 17:25 GMT+02:00 Cristobal :

Hello everyone,

I'm Cristobal, a computer science student at Universidad de Santiago de Chile and I've been using GIMP for many years (mainly for web design). I would like to contribute to the GIMP project in this area and I've prepared a proposal aiming to revamp the current website, which I think needs a refresh. But my proposal doesn't only suggest a new HTML design, but an underlying application platform (git+gitolite+git submodules+static website generator) and content formatting (markdown). You can read the proposal in the following link. It should be about ~20 min. of reading.

https://leivaburto.github.io/gimp-web-revamp/

In the proposal you'll find all the steps I followed to make things work on a CentOS machine and Github, together with links to working platforms, four links and screenshots to design proposals (A, B, C, D), and a link to my CV/Resume so you can get to know me a little bit.

I'm aware that GIMP has participated in GSoC in the past years, and I believe that this proposal could fit as a GSoC project for this year, if you want to. I know there are still a couple of months for submitting applications, but we could use this time to discuss the proposal.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Best, Cristobal
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On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 6:25 PM, Cristobal wrote:

Hello everyone,

I'm Cristobal, a computer science student at Universidad de Santiago de Chile and I've been using GIMP for many years (mainly for web design). I would like to contribute to the GIMP project in this area and I've prepared a proposal aiming to revamp the current website, which I think needs a refresh. But my proposal doesn't only suggest a new HTML design, but an underlying application platform (git+gitolite+git submodules+static website generator) and content formatting (markdown). You can read the proposal in the following link. It should be about ~20 min. of reading.

https://leivaburto.github.io/gimp-web-revamp/

"At some point, it is supposed to be a contest for designing the homepage, which means the gimp-web team is open to contributions from the community (Prokoudine)."

I would really, really avoid design contests.

The rest of the proposal look very good to me :)

Alex

I, for one, appreciate the effort to sit down and document these ideas. Particularly to having a rudimentary look at the google trends data.

I think it's a great start, but there are some questions we should probably address before getting too far down the design hole.

1. Can we extrapolate (anec-data is fine here I would think), what the top three main purposes a person might land on the GIMP page for? For instance, if I were to guess it would probably be download, tutorials, help. Whatever the consensus may be, I would focus the design on answering those top three reasons as prominently (and clearly) as possible. I feel this should be the first question we should be asking ourselves (and answering).

2. The current site is already a static generated site mostly (entirely? still not sure how the news articles are created). I don't mind moving to other systems (I am building http://pixls.us in a similar vein using node.js and metalsmith personally), but is it an option that makes the most sense? I'm just asking - my opinion is that it does make sense, and that using markdown/YAML-front-matter is fine. At the moment, contributing to the site is a rather messy affair for anyone not comfortable with the toolchain and environment (but once they are, it's a very simple effort and not significantly harder than using an intermediate markup language).

In fact, a sub-question to this point would be: is there a method we can achieve our goals while including a simple means for others to contribute? I'm a fan of lowering the bar for contributing (technically), to help increase possible throughput of good material.

3. Should this discussion also include possible migration and management questions surrounding the registry? It's a problem that will need to be addressed at some point, as the current infrastructure is a bit creaky.

Your last point is well made about an in-depth analysis being needed. Is the ML the best place to kickstart the discussions and notes, or should we open a page on the wiki? (I'm leaning towards prokoudine here for guidance).

I have more thoughts, but am currently sifting through a mountain of correspondance, so apologies for being short. :)

pat

On Mon Jan 05 2015 at 9:26:37 AM Cristobal wrote:

Hello everyone,

I'm Cristobal, a computer science student at Universidad de Santiago de Chile and I've been using GIMP for many years (mainly for web design). I would like to contribute to the GIMP project in this area and I've prepared a proposal aiming to revamp the current website, which I think needs a refresh. But my proposal doesn't only suggest a new HTML design, but an underlying application platform (git+gitolite+git submodules+static website generator) and content formatting (markdown). You can read the proposal in the following link. It should be about ~20 min. of reading.

https://leivaburto.github.io/gimp-web-revamp/

In the proposal you'll find all the steps I followed to make things work on a CentOS machine and Github, together with links to working platforms, four links and screenshots to design proposals (A, B, C, D), and a link to my CV/Resume so you can get to know me a little bit.

I'm aware that GIMP has participated in GSoC in the past years, and I believe that this proposal could fit as a GSoC project for this year, if you want to. I know there are still a couple of months for submitting applications, but we could use this time to discuss the proposal.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Best, Cristobal
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Am 05.01.2015 um 16:39 schrieb SorinN:

Interesting proposal - but why this construction on top of a revision control system .. ?

Because this works, and doesn't need any complex UI and functionality in the website which will only re-implement features that are available in text editors, IDEs and version control systems.

BTW, I'm not sure if adding gitolite is really necessary - or even possible; we are using the GNOME Git repository, and they are in charge of access control there.

Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD

Am 05.01.2015 um 16:50 schrieb Pat David:

2. The current site is already a static generated site mostly (entirely? still not sure how the news articles are created).

This is the only time when a python script is invoked by a web access - but only when news are actually created or changed. It generates static file that is included in the index.html (so yes, we use SSI).

This was also a major pain when we moved to the SELinux environment of the current server - it is amazing how much has to be adjusted to allow for such little tasks.

Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD

On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 6:50 PM, Pat David wrote:

1. Can we extrapolate (anec-data is fine here I would think), what the top three main purposes a person might land on the GIMP page for?

Since I do have Google Analytics on gimp.ru, here's the data for the last 30 days, sorted by % of session exit pages, minus the main page:

1) GIMP downloads 2) GIMP help downloads
3) GIMP add-ons downloads

If you roll them into one, that would become

1) Downloads 2) Articles/Tutorials
3) News

The forum is the 4th one.

Of course, the two websites are structured differently, so there's only so much extrapolation one could make.

2. The current site is already a static generated site mostly (entirely? still not sure how the news articles are created). I don't mind moving to other systems (I am building http://pixls.us in a similar vein using node.js and metalsmith personally), but is it an option that makes the most sense?

Realistically speaking, there are mostly two people updating the website: Michael Schumacher and me. As far as I can tell, both of us are fine with static page generators. For me, it might even improve collaboration on news, because right now I typically post stuff in gists and share on IRC before publishing. Although I won't be around forever, and this has to be considered as well.

We _might_ need to take into consideration opinions of people who want to work on localized versions of the website. However, having been there with inkscape.org, I'm not exactly optimistic about sustainability of localized websites. But that's just my reality-driven opinion, nothing more.

3. Should this discussion also include possible migration and management questions surrounding the registry? It's a problem that will need to be addressed at some point, as the current infrastructure is a bit creaky.

The problem with the registry is that whoever maintains is, to the best of my knowledge, never in direct contact with the core team. And the core team never has time to take care of the registry.

If we don't have the manpower to provide QA and security check for addons, we can't take the registry over. Again, just my opinion.

Alex

I'm not a designer - but I do think the site could be really improved with some more content and information. I would be happy to help with Javascript, PHP, or anything else that needs doing. Samuel

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 8:46 AM, Cristobal wrote:

On 05/01/15 14:56, Cristobal wrote:

BTW, I'm not sure if adding gitolite is really necessary - or even possible; we are using the GNOME Git repository, and they are in charge of access control there.

So I talked with some of you on IRC yesterday and the idea is to keep using Gnome servers and Gitolite would not be a necessary step for us.

What do you guys think of the rest of the proposal, specifically about using Jekyll (or Pelican, or some other app) and reorganize the website structure in order to separate content from design? What do you think of the designs proposals (A, B, C, D)?

Do you want to give this proposal a try (after a proper discussion)?

Looking forward to hear from you.

Best, Cristobal
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On 06.01.2015 17:46, Cristobal wrote:

What do you guys think of the rest of the proposal, specifically about using Jekyll (or Pelican, or some other app)

I would prefer if we can use something that works in an Apache+Python environment. This would keep changes to the current server low.

Regards,
Michael
GPG: 96A8 B38A 728A 577D 724D 60E5 F855 53EC B36D 4CDD

There is Pelican (http://docs.getpelican.com/en/3.5.0/) as an option for an SSG using Python.

On Tue Jan 06 2015 at 12:34:26 PM Michael Schumacher wrote:

On 06.01.2015 17:46, Cristobal wrote:

What do you guys think of the rest of the proposal, specifically about using Jekyll (or Pelican, or some other app)

I would prefer if we can use something that works in an Apache+Python environment. This would keep changes to the current server low.

-- Regards,
Michael
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I'm available to help where needed as well. Might want to keep things like the product vision (
http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/GIMP_UI_Redesign#product_vision) in mind as well.

On Tue Jan 06 2015 at 5:03:49 PM Samuel Ricks wrote:

I'm not a designer - but I do think the site could be really improved with some more content and information. I would be happy to help with Javascript, PHP, or anything else that needs doing. Samuel

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 8:46 AM, Cristobal wrote:

On 05/01/15 14:56, Cristobal wrote:

BTW, I'm not sure if adding gitolite is really necessary - or even possible; we are using the GNOME Git repository, and they are in

charge

of access control there.

So I talked with some of you on IRC yesterday and the idea is to keep using Gnome servers and Gitolite would not be a necessary step for us.

What do you guys think of the rest of the proposal, specifically about using Jekyll (or Pelican, or some other app) and reorganize the website structure in order to separate content from design? What do you think of the designs proposals (A, B, C, D)?

Do you want to give this proposal a try (after a proper discussion)?

Looking forward to hear from you.

Best, Cristobal
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Also, just a side note to consider, but I would personally keep an eye on compatibility. There are GIMP users working across a large range of OS and browsers, and you can't assume that they will all have modern browsers/javascript/GUI (seriously, the current page works fine in lynx).

So, semantic, valid xhtml and designing for least capability first, etc... (don't rely on javascript or jquery being available).

On Wed Jan 07 2015 at 7:25:36 AM Cristobal wrote:

On 06/01/15 20:13, Pat David wrote:

I'm available to help where needed as well. Might want to keep things

like

the product vision (
http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/GIMP_UI_Redesign#product_vision) in mind

as

well.

Awesome, thanks! In the next few days I'll update the proposal considering Pelican (in Python) + Apache and I'll post it back to the list. I'll also consider the product vision to update the design.

On Tue Jan 06 2015 at 5:03:49 PM Samuel Ricks wrote:

I'm not a designer - but I do think the site could be really improved

with

some more content and information. I would be happy to help with Javascript, PHP, or anything else that needs doing. Samuel

Thanks! For now, all I'm using is HTML+CSS and a little bit of JS (more specifically, jQuery). I'm also using dummy content on the design proposal but I'll try to update it following the product vision.

Best, Cristobal
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On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 4:24 PM, Cristobal wrote:

On 06/01/15 20:13, Pat David wrote:

I'm available to help where needed as well. Might want to keep things like the product vision (
http://gui.gimp.org/index.php/GIMP_UI_Redesign#product_vision) in mind as well.

Awesome, thanks! In the next few days I'll update the proposal considering Pelican (in Python) + Apache and I'll post it back to the list. I'll also consider the product vision to update the design.

On Tue Jan 06 2015 at 5:03:49 PM Samuel Ricks wrote:

I'm not a designer - but I do think the site could be really improved with some more content and information. I would be happy to help with Javascript, PHP, or anything else that needs doing. Samuel

Thanks! For now, all I'm using is HTML+CSS and a little bit of JS (more specifically, jQuery). I'm also using dummy content on the design proposal but I'll try to update it following the product vision.

Hi Cristobal,

Any news? Do you need assistance with something?

Alex

Ok, so I have some thoughts on this if you all don't mind indulging me...

I love the idea of a site re-design for a number of reasons (better organization of content, modern look, better usability for access to important information quickly and efficiently for users, lowering the barrier to entry for contributions, etc...).

Having recently spent all my free time building out pixls.us for fun, I'm still neck deep in this stuff so it's fun to think about.

I feel it would be beneficial to separate content from presentation. This allows the same content to be massaged into different forms later on (hopefully relatively easily). Using something like Markdown for page data is a very nice way to significantly lower the barrier for others to contribute (but is by no means a guarantee that they will - just that it would be a lot easier than it is currently).

I also tend to like the static site generation path. My personal main consideration for a page/site is to make it as lightweight, fast, and as useful as possible. This generally also has the benefit of reducing vectors for possible malicious acts.

So, if we consider the idea of using intermediate content files (markdown) and passing them through a static generator of some sort (jekyll, metalsmith, whatever) then we just need to address how best to handle the back-end data.

(As a side note, so far this is exactly how I have been building out pixls.us, just using markdown and metalsmith (node.js) to generate the site).

Is the ability to have multiple GIT repositories and permissions something we can easily setup on our existing infrastructure? Is it something we _should_ consider setting up? At the moment, when working on things on wgo, I just update my local copy of wgo, merge, work, push, etc...

I am busy building out another site at the moment, but things are still fresh in my head, and as such I'd be willing to start work on a redesign of wgo. I'm going to start making some notes and thoughts on the wiki:

http://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/WGO_Redesign

I may also branch wgo to start testing some ideas, but I will have some questions about the "application layer" setup as described by Cristobal...

All,

To continue along with my thoughts below, I just wanted to update everyone.

I am finally getting around to installing the pre-requisites for using Pelican (static site builder for python). This is in preparation to begin seriously looking at building the revamp as suggested by Cristobal in his initial correspondence.

I will be working on this sporadically in the coming weeks, in case anyone wanted to help out or experiment with me.

pat

On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 10:11 AM Pat David wrote:

Ok, so I have some thoughts on this if you all don't mind indulging me...

I love the idea of a site re-design for a number of reasons (better organization of content, modern look, better usability for access to important information quickly and efficiently for users, lowering the barrier to entry for contributions, etc...).

Having recently spent all my free time building out pixls.us for fun, I'm still neck deep in this stuff so it's fun to think about.

I feel it would be beneficial to separate content from presentation. This allows the same content to be massaged into different forms later on (hopefully relatively easily). Using something like Markdown for page data is a very nice way to significantly lower the barrier for others to contribute (but is by no means a guarantee that they will - just that it would be a lot easier than it is currently).

I also tend to like the static site generation path. My personal main consideration for a page/site is to make it as lightweight, fast, and as useful as possible. This generally also has the benefit of reducing vectors for possible malicious acts.

So, if we consider the idea of using intermediate content files (markdown) and passing them through a static generator of some sort (jekyll, metalsmith, whatever) then we just need to address how best to handle the back-end data.

(As a side note, so far this is exactly how I have been building out pixls.us, just using markdown and metalsmith (node.js) to generate the site).

Is the ability to have multiple GIT repositories and permissions something we can easily setup on our existing infrastructure? Is it something we _should_ consider setting up? At the moment, when working on things on wgo, I just update my local copy of wgo, merge, work, push, etc...

I am busy building out another site at the moment, but things are still fresh in my head, and as such I'd be willing to start work on a redesign of wgo. I'm going to start making some notes and thoughts on the wiki:

http://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/WGO_Redesign

I may also branch wgo to start testing some ideas, but I will have some questions about the "application layer" setup as described by Cristobal...