Re: [oswg] Linux Knowledge Base project (fwd)

[Jason Pincin <jpincin@linuxkb.org>]

I'd like to answer a few of these comments for our group and others -


>  1.  Revision control.  How are you going to track changes to the questions
>      (and the answers) so that you can properly attribute changes to 
>      individuals.

Excellent point.  Already being taken into consideration.  I'm going way
beyond what is mentionded here.  It will most likely be ready by go live.
I'm not just implimenting revision control for articles, questions,
comments, etc.  I'm implimenting revision control for every type of object
that can possibly exist.  It's an integral part of the objects and
database, or will be.  Developers won't even know it's happening.

>  2.  Mirroring.  Resources like this are much more useful if they can be
>      mirrored.  Both in the large sense of having multiple servers around
>      the globe, so that people can be directed to the closest server to them
>      as necessary, and in the smaller sense of people maintaining local 
>      mirrors of the information on their computers.  For many people it's
>      cheaper to maintain a local copy of the information than it is to fire
>      up a connection to the Internet every time they want to check something.


This is the least of my concerns.  But it is at the far back of my mind.
It will be doable, but not through conventional mirroring means.

>  3.  Multiple language support.  If there's one thing working on the FreeBSD
>      Documentation Project has taught me is that there are huge numbers of
>      people in non-English speaking countries who are willing to put in 
>      immense amount of effort to translate documentation from English to 
>      their native language.  The FreeBSD Documentation Project has sibling
>      projects converting the documentation to Japanese, Spanish, Russian, 
>      Chinese, and French, to name just a few. 

This is NOT an easy task, but one that I am aware of.  I have put some
thought into the subject and believe I will be able to impliment a viable
solution for multi-lingual documents, etc.  I am implimenting a very
modular backend that will handle language extensions eventually.  The
precise method I believe these should be implimented, I am reserving until
I see how things perform after go-live.  Bottom line:  Is it being
considered - yes.  Will it be there eventually - yes.  Will it be there by
go-live - no.

Jason Pincin