Constructive Ideas
Constructive Ideas
- Subject: Constructive Ideas
- From: Bertrand Mansion <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 20:23:07 +0200
le 24/05/02 17:29, Brock Brandenberg ` email@hidden a icrit :
>
Hi all.
>
>
Now to add some constructive ideas to this topic.
(... some compliments here ... Thanks Brock ! ...)
>
Bertrand's new directory brings up an idea which could help the repeated
>
newbie question. The list has a number of message threads that have
>
excellent answers to many topics. Would you consider it a decent idea to
>
design a directory or table of contents that lists these topics in a
>
manner that mimics Apple's doc organization? Each topic entry could
>
either be a link to the first message(s) of a thread or a link that is a
>
query itself that extracts the relevant results.
I have thought about a solution for this but it doesn't seem to work very
well. I called it 'bookmarks', it is in the top navigation of the site:
http://cocoa.mamasam.com/bookmarks
It has two advantages:
1. it helps you remember where you found interesting messages.
2. it can help others find these messages if you make your bookmarks public.
If you look at the current public folders, there is one about 'MySQL
wrappers' and one about 'Cocoa books': both are very common questions. This
way I hope newbies (including me) will find some resources without having to
use the search engine or ask the mailing list: someone has already done the
compilation job for them.
My only concern is that only 2 users are using this feature right now. I
know it can take some time for users to get used to a new feature but it
starts to look long to me... Anyway, the feature is here, feel free to use
it.
>
We could of course add
>
new entry listings to make up for Apple's weakenesses, inserting topics
>
where they are sorely needed. The concept is similar to the C++ FAQ book
>
that you can buy at the bookstore. It's a composition of FAQs that is
>
invaluable as a C++ developer. The author(s) have organized it
>
reasonably well so you can locate useful info relatively quickly.
I am very short in time but I am willing to help. Sure, I wish I knew Cocoa
better to answer questions but as I know PHP very well, I can help the
community by coding some new tools for the site. I am open to all requests,
it is just a matter of time and disk space ;-)
IMO, the main priority is to have access to Apple documentation, store it in
a database, make it searchable, present it the way 'Cocoa Browser' does,
allow user comments and fill it with examples and links to related messages.
But I wonder if we can do that and what is Apple policy regarding the use
and modification of its documentation. There might also be some other ways,
I don't know. If you have some ideas, do not hesitate to tell me.
>
As a more experienced developer, if someone handed me an outline like
>
Apple's Cocoa Documentation page and asked me to find matching topics in
>
the lists, I bet I could pull 85% of the relevant topics out, given a
>
little bit of time, and with some help from a couple of other veterans,
>
I bet we could hit all the needed ones. This idea is geared strongly
>
toward Bertrand, and I would be glad to put in the time to work on it.
>
I'm trying to organize the knowledge that I've gained and give back to
>
the Cocoa community (right now in the way of articles on Cocoa Dev
>
Central) to make the docs better.
I will be happy to help.
Just tell me how you see these things organised.
>
It's a shame to have such an
>
incredible development environment, but have to work so hard sometimes
>
to find the answer to something that was just someone's oversight in the
>
Apple documentation or its organization.
I believe we need to create a strong developer community where people help
each others and welcome newbies. The number of Cocoa developers is so
ridiculous right now compared to other languages (not even a category in
yahoo !) that I feel we need to make everything we can to get new members.
Today, in France (where I live), nobody knows about Cocoa and only a few
about MAC OS X. Recognition will only come if there are more and more people
using Cocoa and making cool apps with it. We need to get more organised and
develop our own tools where we miss them.
I would really like everyone with a website or a page about cocoa to submit
his or her site at
http://cocoa.mamasam.com/links This is not for me, this
is because there are plenty of good (or bad) resources for cocoa and it is
just so hard to find. I don't talk about stepwise.com or oreilly.net, I talk
about you, yes YOU !, in front of your computer who has written a small
tutorial or a useful framework and who thinks google will index it some day
anyway. Remember, the more links point to your site, the faster you will be
indexed, the better score you will get.
Thanks for helping me make Cocoa Mamasam a useful and valuable resource,
Bertrand Mansion
Mamasam
--------------------------------------------------------
* Browse cocoa-dev and macosx-dev mailing list archives:
http://cocoa.mamasam.com
* Submit your link:
http://cocoa.mamasam.com/links
--------------------------------------------------------
Wishlist:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/registry/wishlist/026-0946207-2854852
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.