Re: external image of SPIP, compared to other CMS : what do you think about it ?

Dear Thomas,

thank you for pointig out so precisely the main issue for the further 
development of SPIP. It makes me feel better that the large number of 
hours I used to figure out (mostly perfect) solutions are not so much 
due to my lack of programming skills but rather a common phenomenon.

I have been usin SPIP from it's very beginning and still admire the well 
focused concepts behind but I have had a hard time recently trying to 
follow the developments an the core side. At this moment they are likely 
to do another great job which we all have been asking for : they are 
splitting up the code into a real core which drives plugins providing 
the functions we arer using. But in the same time I feel a bit unhappy 
about this happening without being documented right from the beginning 
of this step.

Although one of my main arguments for using SPIP is it's independence 
from institutional or commercial influences (yes, it still is a very 
political project) this seems to be one of the reasons for our problem : 
the way the SPIP community works does not follow the necessities of a 
professional project and therefore does not easily decide to adopt a 
mature client-centered attitude.

We shall discuss this intensively at the Avignon meeting and I am 
optimistic about the results.

Sincerely,
klaus++

Thomas Sutton schrieb:
> Hi all,
> 
> On 14/06/2009, at 4:20 PM, Gilles VINCENT wrote:
> 
>> This was in reaction to a discussion about to name to give to a new 
>> functionality in SPIP : themes in the private area.
>>
>> In your opinion, which impression of SPIP can be perceived by 
>> non-french speaking developers ?
> 
> I didn't read the linked messages too closely (Google translate kills 
> gmane's interface and doesn't translate all that well  ) but I have a 
> few comments about the topic in general.
> 
> There have been a few mentions of the fun side and personality of SPIP 
> which sounds great, but comes as a surprise to me: I didn't realise that 
> there is any such theme to the SPIP terminology. By the time we see most 
> of these concepts, whatever humour or fun there is in the French 
> terminology has been translated away. The only difficulty I see here is 
> where the "official" SPIP translation differs from the "normal", e.g., 
> English name for something. The skeletons vs. templates thing is a good 
> example.
> 
> I'd like to reiterate the point that Heiko Jansen made: that the state 
> of the (developer) documentation makes SPIP amongst the least accessible 
> Open Source projects I've used. I've been using SPIP full-time for 
> nearly two years now, and frequently doing "new" things. All too often I 
> find myself tracing PHP code because the documentation just isn't there, 
> even in French!
> 
> The situation *is* improving, but there is still a long way to go. Just 
> compare <http://api.drupal.org/> and <http://doc.spip.org/> to see the 
> difference in the depth and coverage of the Drupal and SPIP 
> documentation. I'd love it if SPIP had such complete documentation in 
> French or English or, even better, both. Without it, those of us trying 
> to learn about SPIP are flying blind. This is a real barrier to entry 
> for those who want to contribute to SPIP, French-speaking or not. In 
> particular, some sort of architectural overview of SPIP would be very 
> much appreciated by people like me, who want to start investigating and 
> modifying SPIP's internals (I, for one, am interested in the template 
> parser and compiler and the "typographical shortcuts" processor).
> 
> Another point, raised by Martín, is that some, possibly a lot, of the 
> documentation seems to be out of date and incomplete. Just look at the 
> "anti-doublons" pattern that Fil described on this list last week. It is 
> mentioned on the <http://spip-contrib.net/> page that Gilles linked to, 
> but to actual find that page you'd nearly need to know the answer 
> already. <http://programmer.spip.org/> has the potential to address at 
> least some of these gaps, but there is a lot left to be translated and 
> it will never be the complete "reference" that, in my opinion, SPIP does 
> need and that <http://spip.net/> currently fails to be.
> 
> To contradict him though, "translating" the documentation has only three 
> prerequisites: that you know your own language, that you know the topic, 
> and that you can use Babelfish or Google Translate. *Anyone* can help 
> translate documentation and everyone is encouraged to jump-in, it's easy 
> and you'll almost certainly learn something, either some French or some 
> SPIP or both, I know I have! I'm sure that Gilles or Fil or someone will 
> be able to point anyone who wants to help in the right direction (We 
> could use some help translating <http://programmer.spip.org/> into 
> English!)
> 
> The idea was raised before of an English SPIP site and I think that that 
> is entirely the wrong direction to go in. Rather than fragmenting the 
> community and documentation even more, perhaps we should think about 
> going in the other direction: concentrating effort and information on 
> fewer sites rather than more?
> 
> Finally, from speaking from my own point of view, I think that the 
> "documentation issue" really is one of SPIP's key drawbacks at the 
> moment. We'd love to use SPIP for all our projects (except where it 
> isn't appropriate, of course) but we've had a number of projects where 
> we could not, primarily because of the documentation: clients simply 
> cannot invest large amounts of money in projects without knowing that 
> their investment does not depend on a single relatively small company 
> (How many companies out there are using SPIP? Is there a "commercial 
> SPIP users group"? Perhaps we should start one?).
> 
> To sum up: we need better documentation (in French or English or both) 
> than we have. It should be complete and up-to-date and should make it 
> much easier than it currently is to learn about SPIP and begin using and 
> contributing. Without it, the community can grow only so much.
> 
> I feel a little presumptuous asking, but do the SPIP developers have any 
> requests or suggestions? How can we, the community, help them to make 
> SPIP, the documentation and the community better?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Thomas Sutton
> 
> Web Developer
> bouncingorange
> graphic + web design
> 
> 
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