Re: Up-to-date News on GCJ

[Gerald Pfeifer <gerald at pfeifer dot com>]

On Wed, 17 May 2006, Ranjit Mathew wrote:
>> * The gcj main page is nice web design from 1998... look at mono's web
>>   pages to get an idea of what it should look like in 2006.  In
>>   particular, we could have more useful information in less space, so
>>   that visitors can get a decent overview without having to scroll.
> We should do it in tandem with the rest of the GCC web pages.

Yes, I'd really like to see GCC and GCJ more and more in tandem,
in various respects.  (In a positive sense here, not in a locked-
to-death one. ;-)

> (I personally consider GCC/GCJ pages to be fairly decent-looking,
> especially if you consider the web pages of other FSF projects.

Well, I do have to agree with Tom.  The FSF requested us to follow
several rules for the web pages, which the current, old design 
already extends to some extent, and I'm not sure how much more
flexibility we could use.

> We can perhaps use one of the designs posted on OSWD:
> 
>   http://www.oswd.org/

We'd need to keep the fixed footers etc., though I noticed that
the main FSF page changed to a somewhat more modern design a while
ago as well.  One common, modern theme, with variations, across
GNU project probably would be best, but not too likely I dare say.

> I have imported the FAQ, the "Done with GCJ" and the status pages
> into the GCC Wiki:
> 
>   http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCJ_FAQ
>   http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Done_with_GCJ
>   http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCJ_Status
> 
> Perhaps we can remove (or prominently display a deprecation notice
> on) the corresponding web pages.

Let me check with RMS first, if you don't mind.  More and more mixing
egular HTML and Wiki doesn't seem write.  Perhaps moving everything
to a Wiki is an option, or clearly defining some areas which are on a
the Wiki might work.

I'm a bit worried that by just mixing things will get more confusing
from a user perspective.

>   2. There is ample scope for vandalism or other forms of abuse.
>   (The GCC wiki itself was the target of some online casino
>   promoting bot abusing the AddComment plug-in.) GCC has high-
>   ranked pages for search engines, so there's every chance that
>   the wiki will be abused to promote the web sites of unscrupulous
>   elements.

That may be an issue, though we may be able to find ways to contain
this?

>   3. Without peer review (unless people are subscribed to the
>   RSS feeds of the relevant pages and actively scrutinise changes),
>   there is a greater chance of well-intentioned but still wrong
>   information making it to crucial pages.

For crucial pages, I think we most not make these world-writable.
And for non-crucial pages, it would be good to have some volunteers
watching and help enforce some very basic rules (like no links to
commercial content).

>   4. The licence for such documentation is not clear to me. If
>   the FSF wants to incorporate anything in the wiki into the
>   manuals for GCC/GCJ, what can it do besides tracking down the
>   author(s) of the relevant bits and getting an agreement for
>   publication?

That's a very good point, one that I believe several people raised
with the FSF, but I haven't seen an official statement yet.  Let me
try to get an answer for you.

On Thu, 18 May 2006, Tom Tromey wrote:
> Yeah.  Though... we do have different PR needs than GCC as a whole.
> IMO it would be fine if we diverged in style, appearance, content, etc.

Does GCJ really have different PR needs?  Frankly, I'd like to give
GCJ much more presence in terms on the GCC side, and ramp of GCC PR
quite a bit.  I don't necessarily think the needs are so different,
rather that GCJ may be doing better. :-)

>> Perhaps we can remove (or prominently display a deprecation notice
>> on) the corresponding web pages.
> Nuke 'em.

Redirects would be nice.  And easy to set up with .htaccess in the
wwwdocs/htdocs directory.

Gerald