Re: LinuxKB Project Restart

[Jason Pincin <chardros@chardros.com>]

For reference purposes, I'm forwarding my reply to a message I recieved 
from Daniel.  I repeat - nothing concrete, and I probably won't bring it 
up again unless I actually put something up.

Forwarded message:
_____________________________________________________
*grin*

Looks like I wasn't the only one missing LinuxKB ;)

I began throwing some ideas together just a few weeks ago for an interim 
LinuxKB (while OODS is pending).  My approach is somewhat radically 
different however.  

Let me first say, that the following ideas may never come to light, and 
that by no means am I trying to impact your decision to do something 
different.

OK.  Since you asked, here's what I was thinking:

After much thought, I came to realize that the DB was not the end-all 
be-all when it came to LinuxKB :).  Documents do not come in "sql format".  
Documents do not easily break down to "sql format".  More and more docs 
are available in DocBook format all the time.  So why not just use DocBook 
and the good 'ol fashion file system to store documents?  And the link 
between those docs and LinuxKB's site would be a custom sgml2html script 
that could take DocBook text and build LinuxKB pages.  Simple really.  

As far as directory-like organization for categories, drill-down, etc... 
LDAP.  SQL was never designed for such a thing, and it showed in the 
massively complex queries we had to do in order to impliment a "directory" 
in SQL.  LDAP on the other hand was written from scratch to do just that.  
So it's a perfect fit for the "directory" skeleton.  LDAP is very free 
form, so it allows you to assign different properties to each entry all 
along the tree.  There's no rigid structure like SQL tables.  

What SQL is good for is tabular data... like document meta-data.  So I'd 
have a far scaled-back backend DB, most likely with one or two tables 
doing nothing but document meta-data.

And the biggest piece of this version was going to be the Question&Answer 
capabilities.  The abilities for it to route via web or email or whatever.  
The ability to build virtual email lists based on very dynamic info 
supplied by questioneers and answerers.  

And so on and so forth.  I don't wanna talk you to death.  Just something 
I've been thinking about.  Simple enough that it's definately doable.  But 
who knows.... ;)

Keep me posted on what yur up to with regards to it.  I'll let you know if 
I get any code together for things I've discussed above.  I have a little 
bit of a head start if I decide to do it, cuz I already have all the 
directory code done (from a work-related project).  Anyway... talk to ya 
soon.



On Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 04:00:07PM -0500, Daniel E. Markle wrote:
> For those of you subscribed to this list that may be wondering, there are a
> couple of new attempts now in progress to jumpstart the LinuxKB project and
> get something going again.  One of them is here:
> 
> http://yukon.linuxkb.org/~syntax/linuxkb-lite/linuxkb-lite.html
> 
> This is just a tentative idea, with a stupid name, to toss some thoughts out
> there.  Expect traffic to this list to increase as planning and work is done
> to find ways to get things going again.
> 
> -- 
> -------------------
> Daniel E. Markle
> syntax@ashtech.net
> http://www.ashtech.net/syntax
> -------------------

-- 
Jason Pincin
Project Leader
http://www.oods.org/
http://www.linuxkb.org/
http://www.chardros.com/