Thanks Bryce.

Setting it up to be forums.inkscape.org is a great idea. I think it would be best to keep it looking uniform too, so adopting a similar layout and colour scheme to inkscape.org will keep appeal to beginers aswell.

Yes, i'd be willing to maintain them but I'm not to cluey on how to set them up, but I'm willing to spend a few nights learning by trial and error.

I'm really exited by the idea.

Oh, just a side point, how do you create the green text in the reply that you just created? Is is just html markup?

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 09:34:14AM +0200, Cory Pollard wrote:

Thanks Bryce.

Setting it up to be forums.inkscape.org is a great idea.

Great, let us know when it's set up and live, and we can set the records to point to it.

I think it would be best to keep it looking uniform too, so adopting a similar layout and colour scheme to inkscape.org will keep appeal to beginers aswell.

Sounds good

Yes, i'd be willing to maintain them but I'm not to cluey on how to set them up, but I'm willing to spend a few nights learning by trial and error.

Sounds like a fun learning project. Most of the php web apps I've played with have been reasonably straightforward to set up, although sometimes you have to experiment with a few packages to find one you like. Watch out for ones that have a lot of functionality you don't need; they can be less robust or too resource intensive or a challenge to administer.

I'm really exited by the idea.

Oh, just a side point, how do you create the green text in the reply that you just created? Is is just html markup?

Dunno, I'm just sending plain black and white email - perhaps this is something your mail client is doing?

Bryce

Hello,

I'm new to the mailing list and I am very happy that the first mail I receive is dedicated to an Inkscape forum! :) It's a great idea, Inkscape users definitely needed something like that.

About the forum engine: PHPbb is definitely a great choice, since it is a quite versatile and easy to manage/update.

About the hosting: try to find a hosting where the amount of traffic is unlimited or bigger that 50Gb monthly. Also, a huge FTP and database size will be great, since usually problems occur with that (database full). Since I am located in the Czech Republic, I can give you a link to a hosting that has more less these parameters, take a look at that so you'll have something to compare with :) http://www.forpsi.com/webhosting/normal.php

Hope that helps!!

Best regards, Molumen

----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry Hancock" <hancock@...1624...> To: inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 1:43 PM Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] Possible Forum Setup.

Cory Pollard wrote:

...

I've had a thought that others may be interested in.

I would like to start a forum dedicated to inkscape. A place where we can have different headings/subheadings, tutorials, screenshots, WIP, and general discussions. I wanted to see if others would be interested in making use of such a site. I would probably register under inkscapeforums.com or simmilar.

I'd use it.

...

I can pay for domain registration and some hosting too. But, does anyone know the overall cost for running forums per annum?

That obviously depends on how you do it, and how much work you're willing to do on your own.

Off the cuff, I'd imagine you geting a virtual private server (Xen or OpenVPS), then running PHP BB.

Drupal or Plone (depending on whether you like PHP or Python/Zope better) might be a good option, because they are full CMS systems that incorporate forum features. That could be good since we presume an important activity of the site would be posting pictures. It would also provide a means to do tutorials, and other more permanent content.

The cost is just the VPS hosting cost. I don't know about Australia, but in North America, this is about $20-$40/mo depending on details of bandwidth, memory, and disk space available. IMHO, for the application you are talking about, just about anything is going to be adequate. OTOH, I'm paying about $20, and I think they've got a few too many account on the machine (too slow), so you might want to think about that.

Alternatively, I'm pretty sure there are specific forum-hosting services, but I would be a little leary of going that way myself.

Most of the cost is going to be 'sweat equity', though. :-)

...

Also, I don't want to tread on the feet of the Devs and everyone who started inkscape, would you guys be cool with the idea?

So, give some feedback and see if we can get this thing started.

Cheers, Terry

-- Terry Hancock (hancock@...1625...) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com

---

Inkscape-user mailing list Inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user

On Mon, 05 Jun 2006 13:56:00 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:

I realise there is something of a generation gap and some users really do prefer using web based forums for everything (as opposed to getting a better email client, or using news (NNTP) or anything else).

I would suggest that any forums solution for any project should include an NNTP interface - there are plenty of packages out there that provide NNTP and web-based forums (FUDForum comes to mind).

Jim

On Tue, 06 Jun 2006 02:07:54 +0200, Colin Marquardt wrote:

Jim Henderson <hendersj@...155...> writes:

...

On Mon, 05 Jun 2006 13:56:00 +0100, Alan Horkan wrote:

...

I realise there is something of a generation gap and some users really do prefer using web based forums for everything (as opposed to getting a better email client, or using news (NNTP) or anything else).

I would suggest that any forums solution for any project should include an NNTP interface - there are plenty of packages out there that provide NNTP and web-based forums (FUDForum comes to mind).

If such a thing comes into existance, then might vote yes.

FUDForum is an open source project that integrates NNTP with a fairly decent web-based front-end. It doesn't natively access the NNTP server, but maintains its own database of messages. From the little I've played with it, it works fairly well - and it preserves the threading.

There are commercial products available that do this as well, and I'm sure there are other open-source and free projects that do it.

If it's just a regular, "standalone" web forum however, then I'd say that we have many discussion channels and ways to access them already - multiple mailing lists, with an NNTP gateway from http://gmane.org, IRC and Jabber, the Wiki, the different Sourceforge trackers, and even Planet Inkscape could be counted. Keeping them up-to-date and accurate is already very hard - adding more places of information to that would make it even harder. An NNTP interface would at least make it more likely that developers are using the forum.

Yes; one of the critical mistakes I see quite often with online communities is dividing the knowledge baseup by providing too many disconnected options. When you provide separate means of discussing the same topics (such as a web-based forum, a mail list, and a newsgroup), you end up with some who use one, some who use the second, and some who use the third, but rarely do people visit more than one, and the net effect is that you (a) have a lot of repetition of similar discussions, and (b) you dilute the expertise because some will use NNTP but not web-based forums, while others will use web-based forums and refuse to use NNTP. Unity in an online community which shares a common interest (such as a piece of software like Inkscape) strengthens the community and thus strengthens the project.

Another fairly critical issue with regards to web-based forums only is that most of the software (not all of it) does not include threading of discussions. A lack of threading makes it incredibly difficult for those who are used to interacting via e-mail and NNTP to follow a discussion. You end up with endless quote-backs or a lack of context to comments in the discussion; I see this a lot in blogging software even, where the software is not configured to thread comments. It makes the discussion a lot less coherent, and while (for those involved in the discussion at the time) it may make sense at the time of the discussion, the usability in an archival format is seriously diminished. Diminished usefulness of archived discussions results in a lot of the questions being asked over and over again, which drives the regulars to frustration with new users who can't figure out how to find answers to their questions. While the number of messages increases - and some would see that as a good thing and a sign of a vibrant, active community - it is in fact is a bad thing, because the "feel" of the community will tend towards frustration and anger rather than helpfulness.

I hope these quotes have enough good technical, usability and social content to not count as just another rant.

Excellent quotes. I'm going to have to archive them for discussions at work. :-)

Another thing to keep in mind is that PHP code and especially forum software has been quite a security hole in that past - choose wisely and be prepared to update packages on short notice.

Another excellent point.

Jim

Terry wrote:

The truth is a web forum is much more suited to sharing graphical content, and that's what I like about the idea.

Agreed, specially when posting tutorials.

Thanks, Molumen

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 04:42:14PM -0600, Jim Henderson wrote:

On Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:39:31 +0200, momo wrote:

...

Agreed, specially when posting tutorials.

That's not really suited for a forum standpoint, because finding the latest version of the tutorial tends to be more difficult. A wiki is far better for this type of collaboratively-developed content.

For tutorials, we have a process we've set up that's been working fairly well, and I would generally encourage folks to use that, if you can. It's been set up to work for doing translations, and it can produce html as well as svg tutorials. This way, your work can get included into the official tutorials.

Also, we're hoping to try making a big tutorial push along with the user community during the 0.45 development cycle. What we hope to do is split out the current Help menu into some sub-categories, to cover a) usage of inkscape, b) general artistic teaching, c) tricks, tips, and techniques, and d) technical stuff (file format conversion, etc.) So if folks here are interested in doing tutorials for any of these topics, sharpen your pencils and start making some notes. :-)

Bryce

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 07:33:06PM -0600, Jim Henderson wrote:

On Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:24:38 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:

...

For tutorials, we have a process we've set up that's been working fairly well, and I would generally encourage folks to use that, if you can. It's been set up to work for doing translations, and it can produce html as well as svg tutorials. This way, your work can get included into the official tutorials.

Excellent! I've worked through the tutorials that were in Linux Format magazine (excellent work) - I wonder if that content is something that could be rehomed to this set of tutorials as well - there were some very good tutorials in the series that was done there that would be a great contribution to the community.

Probably; usually authors of magazine articles are allowed to re-post the article elsewhere after 30 days, or something. Would you mind doublechecking that this is the case with Linux Format Magazine, and if so, contacting the authors of the tutorials you found useful to see if they'd be open to providing them under the GPL so we can include them in inkscape itself?

Bryce

Hi, Bryce:

Just following up here - I e-mailed the address in the magazine, but have as of yet received no reply. I'm going to look for another address to contact them at to see if I can get an answer from them.

Jim

On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 03:45:12PM -0600, Jim Henderson wrote:

Hi, Bryce:

Just following up here - I e-mailed the address in the magazine, but have as of yet received no reply. I'm going to look for another address to contact them at to see if I can get an answer from them.

Okay, cool, thanks for letting us know.

Bryce

On Tue, 20 Jun 2006 23:58:49 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:

On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 03:45:12PM -0600, Jim Henderson wrote:

...

[quoted text muted]

Okay, cool, thanks for letting us know.

I've just received an e-mail from Dmitry, and he's indicated that once he's finished the current series of tutorials, he's going to start working on rewriting them in an online format, using Inkscape's XML format.

He expects the current series to be finished sometime in the fall.

Jim

On Mon, 5 Jun 2006, momo wrote:

Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 17:39:31 +0200 From: momo <momo@...1935...> Reply-To: Inkscape User Community inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net To: Inkscape User Community inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] Possible Forum Setup.

...

Terry wrote:

...

The truth is a web forum is much more suited to sharing graphical content, and that's what I like about the idea.

Is there something deficient with the Deviant art forums or does that have nothing to do with it?

Agreed, specially when posting tutorials.

Why not post tutorials in the wiki?

Jon A. Cruz wrote:

On Jun 5, 2006, at 8:30 AM, Terry Hancock wrote:

...

And so long as us curmudgeons insist on text-only email, that's likely to persist!

The truth is a web forum is much more suited to sharing graphical content, and that's what I like about the idea.

Well... that might be more of a matter of minor degrees.

So far, most of the people I've talked to requesting forums haven't brought up anything substantive that others can't get already. I've even used graphics-heavy, full HTML multipart mixed MIME newsgroups before supporting artistic communities (NNTP and all). In fact, with a nice NNTP client I can usually get better threading and faster reading than through a web interface.

That's not the point. The point is that on usenet or a mailing list, you will have unending complaints if you use HTML posts. On the web, HTML is expected.

It's not a technical problem, it's a social one.

Cheers, Terry

Terry Hancock escribió:

Alan Horkan wrote:

...

On Mon, 5 Jun 2006, Cory Pollard wrote: I realise there is something of a generation gap and some users really do prefer using web based forums for everything (as opposed to getting a better email client, or using news (NNTP) or anything else).

And so long as us curmudgeons insist on text-only email, that's likely to persist!

The truth is a web forum is much more suited to sharing graphical content, and that's what I like about the idea.

Cheers, Terry

I totally agree, after all, it is precisely *graphics* software we are talking about, not old-fashioned Usenet text-only discussions... Plus the whole thing about HTML posting... So you CAN use your favorite mail software, just not your favorite *formatting*, some of the archaic Netiquette rules seem to be way over the board nowadays (but as long as people will still use CLI based readers, I guess there's not much we can do anyways).

I for one do appreciate my e-mail software, but also reckon its limitations, while it easily manages the amount of traffic of several mailing lists, I also like (very much) the convenience of a web-forum interface... Balance between the two should be attainable, like the proposed NNTP backends. I'd lean forward for a forum, though.

On Jun 11, 2006, at 4:42 PM, John Cliff wrote:

Agree totally, when it comes to graphical discussions email isnt a patch on a forum. Dont think http://forums.cgsociety.org/ for instance would work all that well as a mail list :)

Interesting....

Looks almost exactly like what's been going on in the POV-Ray newsgroups for maybe a decade or more now.

:-)

That's why newsgroups came about as a slight mutation on email. What makes them different is what's needed for discussions like that, but the format of the content is about the same as email behind the scenes. That makes implementing a client *very* easy. And servers too for that matter.

took < 3 secs here, evidently something about your connection to there that wasnt happy. Point was that a community that big would be a total mess as a mail list.

--- Jim Henderson <hendersj@...155...> wrote:

On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 16:42:00 -0700, John Cliff wrote:

...

Dont think http://forums.cgsociety.org/ for instance would work all that well as a mail list :)

It's *painfully* slow. Took at least 30 seconds to load up the 3D stills message list, and now my browser is hung while it continues to load the page. No thanks. If it takes more than a few seconds to pull up a list of messages, most people are going to say "forget this" and go find something else to do. I'm now on 3 minutes waiting for the page to load - that's simply unacceptable. I'm going to have to kill my browser now.

If the choice is something like this or nothing, I'll go with nothing.

Please don't conflate NNTP and e-Mail lists - the two are completely different, and while many e-mail programs can serve as NNTP readers, that doesn't mean they're the same technology.

Jim

---

Inkscape-user mailing list Inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

Jim Henderson escribió:

Ultimately my point as well was that NNTP != Mail List.

I find that particular type of forum to be horrible for conducting coherent discussions; there's absolutely no threading, which means if I want to follow up to reply #3 in a thread that has hundreds of replies in it, I have to cite the entire message I'm replying to. Discussions aren't flat - they're threaded and spread in a tree-like fashion.

Flat "forums" like these are great for real-time discussions, but don't work well for interaction. Forums should not try to mimic an instant messenger system, but rather should try to allow for branched discussions which allow someone to come in a month later and be able to follow a particular line of thought without having to read every message in the thread.

I picked on one thread (and on a second try, the interface loaded up faster) - the "Moon Key, Olivier Ponsonnet (3D)" thread. Most of the replies are "atta boy" type comments, but a few are not.

I was in a similar forum earlier today looking for a way to stream content from Pandora, and found a program that almost does what I need (I should be able to fake the rest of it) - there were about 300 messages in the "thread", and finding the latest version of a file was absolutely hopeless. It ended up being on page 19 of 24, and took me about 20 minutes to find it. The exchange of ideas is a complete jumble and nonsensical to anyone trying to participate after the fact, find out what the program can and cannot do, or how to get it running in an environment outside of where it was written (Windows/Firefox). Totally useless discussion area for me.

For any sort of meaningful online community interaction - particularly one where processes and concepts are being discussed, threading is an aboslute MUST.

Jim

That was a horrible experience for sure... The forums I frequent (www.linuxquestions.org, www.fedoraforum.org, etc) have some rather nice features to them, for instance the ability to search within a thread for a particular message. Also you don't have to quote the whole thing. As with e-mail you can trim down your reply to only include what you want in the quote (though this involves using BBCode). I certainly don't understand many of the points for bashing web forums, maybe I've been on them for far too long to actually prefer them to mailing lists. In any case, I do find advantages to each approach, and I reckon the usfulness of both methods to tackle down the same problem: Human communication via non-real-time text messages. One is web based, which means it can be accessed really easily, all you need is a connection and a browser, so it does not matter what computer you use; the other requires a mail/news client, and a connection... Both seem to be fairly easy to use and both have actually pretty much the same requirements. However the main advantage of web tools I see is that you don't require to have the news client, the browser is enough, so you can visit and read your subscribed threads and what not from any computer regardless it is yours or not, where as for mailing lists/news forums, you do require the client... You can use webmail for mailing lists, but I'm not sure there is a reliable web-based news reader.

In any case the ideal tool would be one which could do both things: provide NNTP access *and* Web access, with the same level of interaction and features for both types of users. Maybe I came to web technologies when the "old ones" were already being surpassed by the boom of web-based tools (early 1990s), maybe I'm too "trendy"... Whichever, I can certainly use either, though I'd rather use web-based... maybe I never learnt how to properly use the tools, and obviously, the web was much easier.

Well, what a great response from all.

Sorry I haven't replied to any, I have been offline for the last week or so. Well, I'm back in Oz now, so this week will be the time I organise something for the forums.

Hello,

I'd like to suggest the following sections:

- Showcase: A place where people can post their works made in Inkscape or with the help of Inkscape. A section like that can actually show how Inkscape can be used to achieve all kind of goals (from veb design to printed design etc...) - Tutorials (tutorials from Inkscape fans and gurus for Inkscape users)

Thanks! Molumen

----- Original Message ----- From: "Cory Pollard" <corypollard@...155...> To: inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 3:41 PM Subject: Re: [Inkscape-user] Possible Forum Setup.

UPDATE:

Well, I have registered the domain www.inkscapeforums.com and have a host. Will set up a PHP forum tomorrow.

Can everyone suggest some titles and any sections you might want to see in the new forums.

I appologise for the delay, but I have been away for ages and haven´t had much time to myself.

Bryce, is there any chance I can get my hands on the original artwork that you guys have on inkscape.org? This is just so we can keep the look consistant. Also, can you setup www.forums.inkscape.org as we disscused awhile ago. I will get my host to point the domain that way too.

Thanks

Cory Pollard

Okay, This is a simple outline for the forums.

any comments? Need more or less?

cory corypollard@...155...

Inkscape Forum Topics

News General Inkscape news

Tutorials How do I do that?

Showcase What can I do with Inkscape

FAQ Having problems with Inkscape

Development Developing Inkscape

General Discusion

+ Inkscape + Design + Off topic

Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:

Cory Pollard escribi�:> General Discusion

...

That outline seems just about right. Any ETA as to when we'll be able to "test drive" these?

Yeah, I´ve paid the hosting guys and am just waiting for an email back from them saying its active. Once that happens, Give me half an hour and she will be a go-er.

I´m still waiting on the artwork from inkscape.org but that can be customised later I guess.

I pretty sure that it should be active tomorrow (GMT +8), so not long to go now.

hereś a slightly updated version of the outline.

Inkscape Forum Topics

News General Inkscape news

Tutorials How do I do that?

Showcase What can I do with Inkscape

FAQ Having problems with Inkscape

Development Developing Inkscape

General Discusion

+ Inkscape + Design + WIP + Off topic + Coding Inkscape

I´m not sure if this is really logically laid out, but keep the feedback coming in.

-- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Cory Pollard a écrit :

Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:

...

Cory Pollard escribi�:> General Discusion

...

That outline seems just about right. Any ETA as to when we'll be able to "test drive" these?

Yeah, I´ve paid the hosting guys and am just waiting for an email back from them saying its active. Once that happens, Give me half an hour and she will be a go-er.

I´m still waiting on the artwork from inkscape.org but that can be customised later I guess.

I pretty sure that it should be active tomorrow (GMT +8), so not long to go now.

hereÅ› a slightly updated version of the outline.

Inkscape Forum Topics

News General Inkscape news

Tutorials How do I do that?

Showcase What can I do with Inkscape

FAQ Having problems with Inkscape

Development Developing Inkscape

General Discusion

+ Inkscape
+ Design
+ WIP
+ Off topic
+ Coding Inkscape

I´m not sure if this is really logically laid out, but keep the feedback coming in.

I don't really see WIP in "General Discusion". OTOH, its place might be more on the wiki (sorry, I'm quite OT, just realised it's "Forum Topics", I though you were reorganising the wiki :) )

On 6/20/06, Loïc Martin <lomartin3@...155...> wrote:

Cory Pollard a écrit :

...

Okay, This is a simple outline for the forums.

any comments? Need more or less?

cory corypollard@...155...

Inkscape Forum Topics

  News                    General Inkscape news

  Tutorials               How do I do that?

  Showcase                What can I do with Inkscape

  FAQ                     Having problems with Inkscape

  Development             Developing Inkscape

  General Discusion

          + Inkscape
          + Design
          + Off topic

Any possibility to have an "Official Guide" section (not the same as tutorials), pasting in the available pages from the one guide that's under an open license?

Thanks

---

Inkscape-user mailing list Inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-user

may be worth having a WIP section as opposed to just the showcase, so people can post what their working on for critique/advice.

...

Any possibility to have an "Official Guide" section (not the same as tutorials), pasting in the available pages from the one guide that's under an open license?

What is the Öfficial Guide¨ is this the page you mean?

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/OtherProjects

-- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Colin Marquardt a écrit :

Loïc Martin <lomartin3@...155...> writes:

...

Any possibility to have an "Official Guide" section (not the same as tutorials), pasting in the available pages from the one guide that's under an open license?

How would you make sure these stay up-to-date? IMO it's better to just link to them.

There's no danger to keep them up-to-date if they just evolve slowly. And the best way to help the guide (http://www.angelfire.com/mi/kevincharles/inkscape/index.html) towards completion is to ease group work, by putting it on a wiki or (but that's not the best solution) a forum.

On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 03:41:14PM +0200, Cory Pollard wrote:

UPDATE:

Well, I have registered the domain www.inkscapeforums.com and have a host. Will set up a PHP forum tomorrow.

Can everyone suggest some titles and any sections you might want to see in the new forums.

I appologise for the delay, but I have been away for ages and haven??t had much time to myself.

Bryce, is there any chance I can get my hands on the original artwork that you guys have on inkscape.org? This is just so we can keep the look consistant.

All of this should be in the inkscape_web subversion module, which you should be able to check out.

Also, can you setup www.forums.inkscape.org as we disscused awhile ago. I will get my host to point the domain that way too.

Yeah, once www.inkscapeforums.com is up and working, we can add that. Once you've got it online, send in a bug ticket assigned to MentalGuy to add this record.

Bryce

On Jun 11, 2006, at 3:56 PM, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:

I totally agree, after all, it is precisely *graphics* software we are talking about, not old-fashioned Usenet text-only discussions... Plus the whole thing about HTML posting... So you CAN use your favorite mail software, just not your favorite *formatting*, some of the archaic Netiquette rules seem to be way over the board nowadays (but as long as people will still use CLI based readers, I guess there's not much we can do anyways).

I for one do appreciate my e-mail software, but also reckon its limitations, while it easily manages the amount of traffic of several mailing lists, I also like (very much) the convenience of a web-forum interface... Balance between the two should be attainable, like the proposed NNTP backends. I'd lean forward for a forum, though.

Personally, I find the web interfaces the opposite for me. They slow things down, get in the way, and even are bad for slow connections.

And as far as "archaic Netiquette" rules go... that's just a misconception. For example, I'd used the POV-Ray newsgroups at least since 1998. That was a good example of an art-based project with good organization of binaries of different types, with threads and robust discussions for each. There are many others, but having personally seen this problem solved eight years ago makes me fairly sure it can be solved today. :-)

Also... even long before that there were many *.binaries newsgroup all over the 'Net. All that's needed is a little organization and communication, not new tech.

Anyway, as far as the technical end of things goes.... it's often just as easy to have a "web forum" front end on a private newsgroup. But what I've seen is that the newsgroup interface is often more convenient. However, the web interface is often handy for the casual poster or "drive-by" newbie. My experience is about that as with webmail versus a mail or messaging client. Webmail interfaces are OK, and often do most of what I want, but for my heavy use I'll pick a "real" mail client whenever possible. Even Netscape 4.x was a good newsgroup client.

On Jun 11, 2006, at 11:57 PM, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:

Jon A. Cruz escribió:

...

Personally, I find the web interfaces the opposite for me. They slow things down, get in the way, and even are bad for slow connections.

And as far as "archaic Netiquette" rules go... that's just a misconception. For example, I'd used the POV-Ray newsgroups at least since 1998. That was a good example of an art-based project with good organization of binaries of different types, with threads and robust discussions for each. There are many others, but having personally seen this problem solved eight years ago makes me fairly sure it can be solved today. :-)

My question would be: How was the artwork shared amongst the users and at the same time ensuring "bandwidth" awareness? With a web interface this is fairly easy (see the policies over at Fedoraforum), as you can simply attach the image(s) and in the message all you will see is a small thumbnail, should you click the thumbnail you will see the full image in all its grandure, at your bandwidth's expense, so from viewing the thread the image won't "get in your way".

That's exactly how the POV-Ray forums present things at the moment. (I've not been up with things there for a while, but did check again).

However.... from an NNTP viewpoint, most clients can be set to automatically fetch attachments of a given size, etc. Leaving much to the user's control.

The NNTP content and the web forum *could* be generated from the same back-end. All it takes is the use of the right software and you can get all this. Whether it's a web front for a news server, or a news feed from a web server doesn't really matter for end users.

• Ease of use. Especially for those inexperienced users with news

services, which I'd expect quite a bit of users not to be acquainted with the service.

• Ease of image sharing. After all we're talking about graphics

software here!

True. Then again, I've seen that some of the forum software out there is very bad on this point. :-) just pick the right stuff.

• No HTML messages restriction (which nowadays seems to be a bit

pointless, especially for a graphically oriented project)

That's been a non-issue on most art-related areas since the last century. :-) Bit of a strawman argument.

One question, tough... This would be a dedicated news:// sever, right? Not (necessarily) accessible through Usenet (my ISP does not provide Usenet access :( )

That would probably be a main requirement. Even when ISP's provide Usenet access, they don't always go through servers that pick up binary groups.

On Jun 12, 2006, at 2:08 AM, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:

Ok, so I won't refrain form using HTML (at least on this list), as in many others the rules are rather strict.

...

...

Well... it depends on the list and such.

For mail, it's still very much preferred. Among other problems, I hit a huge one with sizes. I've got a CRT running at a bit high-res, and am on a mac, so often people posting in HTML generates text that is almost or is unreadable for me.

That doesn't come from HTML itself, but from the software creating the HTML in the first place doing the wrong thing. :-(

On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 17:56:00 -0500, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:

some of the archaic Netiquette rules seem to be way over the board nowadays

That's USENET, and there's nothing that says that newsgroups have to be part of USENET. There's also nothing that says that a community cannot define its own rules in its own newsgroups.

NNTP handles message attachments just fine (using MIME or uuenocding), and as Jon points out, a good newsreader can be configured to download messages under a certain size. I use Pan myself (on Linux), and have it configured to download headers only in binary groups, so I can decide whether or not to download binary attachments at all.

But I also tend towards posting links to large images, and post a smaller image in the message. There's no need to post a 1400x1050 image in any sort of message board just because that happens to be the screen size of my laptop. So I'll post a 640x480 or 800x600 image and link to a larger image on my webserver. There are plenty of ways of making high-resolution images available without selecting an inadequate piece of forum software solely on the basis that you want to have images hosted in the forums.

Jim

Loïc Martin wrote:

...

A wiki would be a good idea for documentation. I think someone mentioned Sourceforge offers a wiki, but I don't really now about it, and Sourceforge never looks easy to use for a newbie like me. I never even saw wiki over there, and even less documentation with images.

You mean a wiki like this? http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page It is linked from the front page. Fell free to add to it any documentation you want.

It is powered by Mediawiki, so you probably will not have problems with the syntax.

On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 01:15:11AM +0200, Lo?c Martin wrote:

It's true some might think it overkill and esteem that not many stuff would get done. However, a good effect of a wiki is that it would make it possible to colaborate to a good "official" Inkscape guide that would get included in Inkscape distributed packages. At the moment, it looks like there's two or three different guide, all of them incomplete, and some single pages that are not the same depending on the language.

It would be nice to put on the wiki one of the guide (the most complete one?) if the author agrees and is happy to collaborate with others. The copyright could be owned by Inkscape, or published under an Open Document license (or any other that would suit Inkscape developers).

Let us know what you think. If Inkscape guide writers are interested, it would be nice to hear their opinion about it. For me, I just know that contacting the authors, downloading the guide somewhere, editing the pages as html or the format required by the guide, learning how to add pictures THEN having to sync everything and wait till the author commits the changes... is something I can't do. However, starting my browser wherever I am for a few hours editing a wiki when I have the time is doable, and far better for collaborative work. Then we would have a nice manual along Inkscape (the pages done in svg inside Inkscape are wonderfull, and the one(s) that made them is really a good teacher - it's just the online manuals I have a grip with :P )

Sorry, I just realised there was a wiki afterwards. And my email has been delayed for strange reasons (it was two days old at least) so it's a bit late.

Yes, the wiki would suit my needs. However, Inkscape guides aren't in the wiki, but on privates pages (so it seems) and seems to be done as a one person job.

It's not just the duplication of efforts, it's also the fact that you can't really easily contribute. A guide on the wiki could progress faster than a single person could do on its spare time.

By 'guides' what specifically are you referring to? The tutorials (which are in svn and we can get you an account)? Or one of the Inkscape Manuals? IIRC there are two manuals - one that was written initially in French and translated into other languages (I don't think the English translation is complete though), and another that someone started as a private project that is actually *quite* complete.

If it's this latter manual, part of the motivation there is that the author is trying to get it published. In general it's hard getting books about open source applications published, and especially so if the content is also available as open source, or has any copyright questions. Almost always, I'm a big proponent of making everything open source, but in this case I think Inkscape will gain more in the long run if the book gets published. Of course, if the book can be published *and* be open sourced, that'd be even better!

Bryce