Date:         Fri, 23 May 2003 11:26:22 -0700
Reply-To:     Jeffrey Schwaia <jeff@TSSGI.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jeffrey Schwaia <jeff@TSSGI.COM>
Subject:      Re: Organizing Vanagon Maintenance Information
Comments: To: Paul Retherford <rethepa@EARLHAM.EDU>
In-Reply-To:  <899E416B-8D37-11D7-9F3D-0050E4502A61@earlham.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

With the amount of information that's been mentioned (2.5GB++), I have
doubts that a non database-based solution would be efficient or practical.

Cheers,

Jeff



-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
Of Paul Retherford
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 9:00 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Organizing Vanagon Maintenance Information


I like the ideas mentioned previously:

1) organize the information per Bentley
2) Let those list members with demonstrated experience
volunteer/moderate for various sections.  I think in some cases there
will be an "accepted way" and in other cases we can list the accepted
way as well as "alternatives" for getting a job done.  List members can
decide (like we always do) whose advice we trust.
3) make it dynamic with minimal administration

 From a technical perspective I would recommend TWiki, a Perl based
system that let's you dynamically add content to any page using only a
web browser.  You can upload images and/or files from your desktop
computer (again using only a web browser).  The system automatically
tracks changes to pages (using RCS version control for you techie's) so
if someone "messes up" a section the administrator can easily revert to
the correct version.  We use it for documentation here at work.

It doesn't use a database, nor any special modules (java or otherwise)
so you only need Apache and Perl to run it.

I do database programming for a living and I just don't think most of
us have the time to build a project of this scope.  TWiki requires no
programming and the administration could be shared among the list.  We
would want to use authentication so that only list members were able to
edit pages.  I can ask my employer about hosting it.  You can see an
example at:

http://ki.earlham.edu/twiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome
or
http://www.twiki.org

Paul
'89 Westfalia