An Open Source Fascicule

5 comments

1. Kunal Modi  
   June 14, 2008 10:29 PM

   Hi Jay,
   Although this is the first time i am directly contacting you, I have been following your good work at Community Docs.
   
   This idea is great. Varun and you have done a good job by bringing this idea back to light. I was reluctant to join this project when it was proposed initially. I was a newbie at that time and hardly had any knowledge about NetBeans Architecture. Since then its been an enlightening journey. I have explored quite a few APIs to understand how things work in NetBeans.
   
   Offline Community Docs will serve a great utility for Docs contributor.
   The initial thought that comes to my mind is a something like a push mechanism. As mentioned in the project specifications on the wiki, the user will need to press submit and then document gets published on the wiki. To do that, I think we need some API support from http://wiki.netbeans.org . Using this API support, publishing of documents can be done easily.
   To make things clearer, I would like to give the example of the blogger plugin for NetBeans uploaded by Shantaram Waingankar. This plugin(which was recently uploaded again after some issues) uses the Google GData API to publish the posts directly to the Blogger account and viewed immediately.
   If such similar API support exists or an access can be obtained or developed for http://wiki.netbeans.org, things could be simpler. Then as mentioned the NetBeans IDE can act as the client to this service.
   I don't know about the feasibility about this thought, but we can collectively work and make progress.
   I think more Community members will come forward to contribute to this project.
   Let me know what you and Varun think about this.

2. Varun  
   June 15, 2008 11:00 AM

   Hey Kunal,
   
   Oh! Glad to know, you were interested some time ago. Anyways, I have made certain changes, revised the Wiki slightly and removed Versioning from module, for the time being.
   
   I had mailed the webteam, nbdev mailing lists, to help in this regard. However, they said checkout is possible with the help of some API's, but not commit.
   
   So, we have made relevant changes in our design, and now we would do as mentioned in the revised Wiki.
   
   Thanks for your comment and pointers. Hope more people come in with invaluable ideas.
   
   Regards,
   Varun

3. Jay Mahadeokar  
   June 15, 2008 11:07 AM

   Hi Kunal!
   
   Thanks for the input. As mentioned by Varun, please check out the revised WIKI proposal. See if you can think in that direction.
   
   Thanks again!

4. shashank ( shantaram )  
   June 17, 2008 7:38 AM

   jay,
   
   i've just gone through the wiki proposal. its interesting and we should give a serious try.
   here are some ideas that popped up
   
   instead of the user having to copy the edited ad formatted doc from nb to the wiki site is there some way we could allow him to post directly. i dont think there iss an API available. to get an idea check the example of the blogger plugin/ blogger api as kunal suggested.
   this would give a huge boost to the project usbility but its feasibility needs to checked.
   
   apart from this the project outline seems good.
   
   another development, maybe in the future would be to allow users to save offline versions of some docs from the wiki site, so they can refer to it offline in nb.
   
   I'll try to explore the posting.
   good luck to the project.

5. Jay Mahadeokar  
   June 19, 2008 2:35 AM

   Hello Shashank,
   
   We will surely consider the idea. If you have any other ideas feel free to contact me at jai.mahadeokar at gmail.com

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