[sword-devel] Remote Repositories

[Troy A. Griffitts]

Thanks for the input Jonathan,

On 12/28/2010 09:57 PM, Jonathan Morgan wrote:
> <scribe at crosswire.org <mailto:scribe at crosswire.org>> wrote:
>     UnlockURL=

> This makes sense.  If it were standardised we might put it in for
> BPBible 0.5, but I wouldn't guarantee it at this stage.

Thanks!

> Is this something that could get out of date?  A publisher changes their
> URL schema and suddenly that link no longer works?

Well, this will probably be used at install time, so hopefully the user
is attempting to remote install the latest version of the module from
the publisher's own remote repository which should have an up-to-date
URL... but of course, I wouldn't put it past someone to forget to update
the entry in the .conf file.


>     2) Current Events:  I'd like to have a:
> 
>     NEWS.txt
> 

Well, a general comment which might have bearing on your thoughts below.
 This item was spawned by a publisher stating that they would like to
"have a chance to interact with" users downloading modules from the
publisher's repository.

This was my first thought to give them a basic mechanism to do such.  I
called it "NEWS.txt" incidentally, as my best guess at what they'd like
to say when they 'interacted' with users.  I could be off on my
assumptions, and obviously the repository maintainer could put whatever
they wanted in there-- not just news.  Maybe, as you say, simply a
repository description, or "Visit us at: http://..." or whatever.

Formatting is another issue you bring up which, if we decide to do this,
we certainly do need to resolve.  I'm not inclined to open up the issue
of moving .conf entries from basicRTF+<a href...> markup right now, so
it would probably stay in line with this lame legacy markup for now.
Just as a summary to this topic, I understand we probably need to
advance to some HTML markup for the .conf About section, but it requires
an orchestrated switch, and frankly, I'm ok with having a very limited
set of tags (I think we support italic, bold, center, paragraph break,
and <a href...>) in our About section.  It makes it easy for a variety
of display methods on a variety of devices.  And it really should just
simply be an "About".

Any more thoughts?

Troy



> Several thoughts on this:
> 1. Is this the most appropriate place to display it?
> 2. Will it be kept up to date? (I get frustrated by websites, etc. that
> have news older than a year or two old, and are either no longer doing
> anything or have given up telling me new things).
> 3. Is it duplicating information shown elsewhere?  Does it mean just
> another thing for publishers to remember to keep up to date?
> 4. What degree of formatting will be needed/wanted in this news?
> 
> I would be inclined to suggest the following instead:
> 1. Module repositories have some kind of a description or about
> section.  This states the purpose of repository, etc., and is hopefully
> much less likely to change or be out of date.
> 2. Module repositories can have a URL to the main site for that module
> repository.  This could be the main page of the publisher or a special
> page for the SWORD repository or whatever else the publisher chooses. 
> If they want to have news I would probably expect it more to be on a
> feed on a webpage somewhere than in InstallMgr.  This also means those
> who come across it who are not using SWORD get the same information, and
> there are no compromises to force-fit the news to what frontends will
> support.
> 
> You could support something like this with a fairly standard conf file
> at the base of the repository.  Maybe other fields could be included as
> well (such as a display name for the repository), but it seems to me a
> bit arbitrary to have news and nothing else, and I'm not sure that I
> follow the reasoning.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Jon
>  
> 
>     Hope everyone has had a very wonderful Christmas filled with family,
>     friends, and love.
> 
> 
>     Troy
> 
> 
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