[pydotorg-www] project plan (python.org and navigation)

[David Goodger]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 06:48, anatoly techtonik <techtonik at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 1:55 AM, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>> Another thing with ReST is that if that's what you would rather use, you will
>> only ever produce content that can be comfortably expressed in that format.

It's easy to insert raw HTML as well, when the limitations of reST are hit.

> Docbook is much much much worse. =)
>
>> As I experienced with ReST's predecessor, convenience of notation is a great
>> thing, but after a while bundling stuff into nested lists is no substitute
>> for a more compelling visual aid such as a table. Only Lisp programmers want
>> to see all the content presented in a monotonous, uniform fashion. ;-)
>
> Really?

No, Paul misrepresents reST here. Tables are integral to reST,
expressible in multiple ways:
grid tables: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#grid-tables
simple tables: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#simple-tables
CSV table directive:
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html#id1
List table directive:
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html#list-table

Why so many? Because reST is a 2D markup, and tables are hard to edit
in 2D ASCII (easier than editing raw HTML though -- modulo personal
preference, of course).

Again, anything HTML can do, reST can do too -- via raw inclusion if necessary:
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html#raw-data-pass-through

> A tabless pydotorg? That's a real surprise. Now I see.

The lack of tables is not because of any limitation of the technology.

> Is
> there any page describing current limitations (and optionally
> advantages) of current pydotorg engine? Is there a description of
> pre-pre engine?

The old engine used ht2html: http://ht2html.sourceforge.net/
It required that authors write & edit HTML fragments.

> I'd really like to see some wikipedia-like summary on the history of
> www.python.org linked somewhere from
> http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonWebsite

I don't think it exists.

> It seems the "new-build"
> is not that new anymore and old Redesign pages like may confuse people
> and lead into wrong direction.  So the knowledge about previous
> "mistakes" or implementation would help to design better system.

Possibly. Please feel free to record your research.

>>> > What I also don't understand why these trivial changes have to wait for
>>> > a revamp of the entire site.
>>>
>>> I don't consider any of this trivial, given the current design of the site.
>
> I've missed that part. Does anybody have a link to these trivial
> changes to judge? Preferably in this space -
> http://wiki.python.org/moin/

You seem to be under the impression that somebody will magically do
this work for you. Won't happen.

-- 
David Goodger <http://python.net/~goodger>