[Pydotorg-redesign] Announcing the FAQ: how?

[A.M. Kuchling]

The first part of the broken-up FAQ, the General FAQ, is now complete
enough that it can be announced more widely in order to collect
suggestions.

Question: how to do this? I could post it on c.l.py, but it's 59K;
that will put a lot of strain on mail.python.org when the posting is
gatewayed and sent out. I could post it to c.l.py.announce, which
probably goes to fewer people, but it presents the same problem for
mail.python.org. I could post just the link to it, but expect that
this will result in fewer comments than if the entire document was
posted. Any suggestions for what to do?

Also, when should I begin changing URLs to point to /doc/faq/ ? How
much of the FAQ needs to be complete at that point?

--amk (www.amk.ca)
CLAUDIUS: Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
-- _Hamlet_, III, i

[Skip Montanaro]

Great work, Andrew!

amk> Question: how to do this?

Post links to c.l.py and c.l.py.a. If people don't take the time to click
the link, you probably didn't want their feedback anway. :-)

amk> Also, when should I begin changing URLs to point to /doc/faq/ ?
amk> How much of the FAQ needs to be complete at that point?

All I see at /doc/faq/ right now is a link to the general FAQ. Can you list
all the sections so we can review all of them?

If possible, it would be nice if the section numbering could be set up so
when the sections are concatenated they have the same numbers as when viewed
separately.

Thx,

Skip

[A.M. Kuchling]

Post by Skip Montanaro
All I see at /doc/faq/ right now is a link to the general FAQ. Can you list
all the sections so we can review all of them?

The general FAQ is the only one that's ready. I'm still in the middle
of revising the programming FAQ; revision is a slow process because so
much needs to be updated and rewritten. OTOH, it's so pleasant to
come across sentences such as "You can use the new isinstance()
built-in in 1.5..." and rip them out or edit them down to match the
2.2/2.3 world.

Post by Skip Montanaro
If possible, it would be nice if the section numbering could be set up so
when the sections are concatenated they have the same numbers as when viewed
separately.

I have no plans to concatenate sections; that results in the existing
240K FAQ which does no one any good (slow to load, chews up lots of
bandwidth, ...)

--amk (www.amk.ca)
It will be good to be dead - to be a god.
-- The emperor Augustus in SANDMAN #30: "August"

[Skip Montanaro]

Post by Skip Montanaro
If possible, it would be nice if the section numbering could be set
up so when the sections are concatenated they have the same numbers
as when viewed separately.

amk> I have no plans to concatenate sections; that results in the
amk> existing 240K FAQ which does no one any good (slow to load, chews
amk> up lots of bandwidth, ...)

Sure, but you should be able to convert ReST to LaTeX or other
print-friendly formats. Not that that will be the dominate use of the FAQ,
but it might appeal to some people. Also, it might be nice to have a full
table of contents (good for scanning when you don't quite know what you're
looking for) whose numbering matches the individual sections.

Skip

[Aahz]

Post by Skip Montanaro
amk> I have no plans to concatenate sections; that results in the
amk> existing 240K FAQ which does no one any good (slow to load, chews
amk> up lots of bandwidth, ...)
Sure, but you should be able to convert ReST to LaTeX or other
print-friendly formats. Not that that will be the dominate use of the FAQ,
but it might appeal to some people. Also, it might be nice to have a full
table of contents (good for scanning when you don't quite know what you're
looking for) whose numbering matches the individual sections.

Let's finish the FAQ content first, then we can talk about writing tools
to concatenate and rip apart. (I want each FAQ question to also be
available as a single file for search engines.)

[Guido van Rossum]

Post by A.M. Kuchling
Question: how to do this? I could post it on c.l.py, but it's 59K;
that will put a lot of strain on mail.python.org when the posting is
gatewayed and sent out.

I would not worry about such a puny amount of bandwidth.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)