[Mono-docs-list] Tool for authors from the web

Gustavo Ramos eureko@grmexico.com.mx
18 Apr 2003 21:27:12 -0400


Hello all!

I am new for the mono community, but has spent some weeks on it, and
followed the project since its inception :-) The last days and since
then on, I'll be working with it. Today i've seen a post in gotmono.com
that attracted my attention immediately, and i think this is a gap where
i can help.

(please read the posts below, and after continue here :-)

This tool would be suitable for organizing the docs the people write,
but most important, it will allow the people to think about their ideas,
not about how to write proper xml, how to compile their docs, or how to
get access to the cvs. The idea is a web CMS that allow people to add
and edit their documents, post them for revision, which when approved
could be converted to xml (automatically) and commited to cvs..

Best regards,

Gustavo Ramos



-------------------------------------------
         gotmono.com post from Spark
-------------------------------------------

What about Wiki?

Hello!

This is just a thought, did you consider setting up a Wiki for mono
documentation? I believe this could suit the "community effort" idea
very well.
Logged


Re: What about Wiki?


------------------------------------
           my response
------------------------------------

d**n!!!
 
I agree completely! I were hoping monodoc to do so, but a web
application should fill the gap for now.
 
I can write a documentation system for the web (a CMS one) on top of a
widget-oriented php library I've made. The widgets saves the contents
into a MySQL database. It is very flexible for defining tables with new
fields, and we can add tables with new fields in some minutes. There are
support for some relational things, like showing combo boxes retrieved
from other tables, for selecting things. It have a high configurable
permission system on a user basis (not groups, yet :-( ), and it is very
modular, i.e. you can just drop a new module in a directory, and voila!
it is automatically recognized by the system. The menus are configurable
in a module basis, so a module author doesn't need to touch the core
phps in order to get the menus shown. It has other feature: The system
generates pdf's on the fly, based on db data. The reporting system is
not complete, just the basic stuff, due to backend pdf engine issues,
but it is intended to build a reporting system on top of the existing
code. There's a nice html wysiwyg editor, that for now works only in ie,
but i think we could make another one that works under mozilla, or
disable completely, to avoid conflicts when converting the data to the
proper xml.
 
I'll be glad to port this system to asp.net when mod_mono, System.Data
and all required stuff reaches a production status. php# or other mono
modules could be considered, too. By now, it should be pretty
straightforward to write a converter that takes the data from the
database and convert it to XML.
 
I know there are a lot of CMS's out there. But I can offer to develop
the mono documentation system (for the web) using this one, as this one
is what I know well about, and what i'm developing frequently. I know,
too, that it is not the best solution for the documentation, but this
one can be built very, very quickly, and we can start collecting docs on
mono fast.
 
Well, I won't go deeper, first tell me what you think.
 
Best regards,
 
Gustavo Ramos
(in #mono as eureko)
 
P.S. This offer will be posted to mono-list, too