[ic] Taking a Poll
Ed LaFrance
edl@newmediaems.com
Tue, 17 Apr 2001 09:33:33 -0700
At 10:15 AM 04/17/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>David Adams wrote:
>
> > 1. The new tag reference. At tremendous effort and expense, we have
> almost
> > completed a comprehensive new tag reference guide. It has taken a very
> > skilled developer many months of work, and we will be making this document
> > available soon. In addition to being on the web site, this document
> will be
> > a part of a printed and bound Interchange manual. <guilt trip>For further
> > documentation efforts to be justifiable to the accountants, it's important
> > that we at least make some movement toward allaying the costs of producing
> > this documentation by selling these manuals. I'll hope that many
> people who
> > read this list will be buying them</guilt trip>. I know that people have
> > been clamoring for a printed manual that they can buy, so we're trying to
> > meet the demand.
>
>thank you. don't mind paying (reasonable price) for good documentation.
>
> > 2. The new developer web site. We're going to be launching a new developer
> > web site that's going to have more tools to allow the developers to
> > contribute to Interchange and to the documentation. We'll be launching
> some
> > Wiki-web-like tools that allow people to contribute to a living FAQ, we'll
> > be working on the annotation features we currently offer to make them
> > better, and we hope to be offering a sourceforge-esque area where
> people can
> > sponsor Interchange-related projects and set up CVS and mailing lists for
> > them. <guilt trip>Of course, this will only be worth the effort if people
> > take advantage of them and they end up benefiting the project, so let me
> > know if you think you'd be interested in taking advantage of these
> > tools</guilt trip>
>
>I think this is good and will be used.
>
> > 3. Making Interchange easier to use. Since Interchange does not result in
> > direct licensing-derived revenue, we have never been able to dedicate as
> > many resources to making Interchange easy to use as we'd like to. We only
> > have a few full-time developers who work solely on Interchange development
> > and we have to pick our tasks carefully. However, there are some options
> > that are open to us, and I'd love to get people's feedback on some of these
> > ideas. One option is to develop a site setup wizard that would make
> > Interchange as accessible as Yahoo store. This would be a separate product
> > you would only have access to by paying, either as a product or a service
> > (ASP style).
>
>if you are saying that this would allow someone hosting a site on an ISP's
>servers to setup, configure and maintain their catalog/cart remotely, this is
>good.
>
>if you are saying an ISP could load this on their servers to allow
>customers to
>setup, configure and maintain their catalog/cart, it is great.
>
> > We could also develop purpose-specific templates for
> > particular types of web sites that could be purchased. ("cookbook" demos,
> > as someone mentioned) So you can either use the generic template that
> comes
> > with Interchange or you could select from a library of templates that might
> > more closely approximate your goals.
>
>good templates for different business scenarios, built by those who really
>know
>Interchange would be a big boost to those learning Interchange. also a
>productivity improvement for those building sites for clients.
>
> > We have also thought about making the
> > process of hiring a consultant to do more complicated work more accessible,
> > by putting together some kind of flat-rate pricing table for various tasks,
> > like they have for auto repair. These prices could be for work
> performed by
> > Red Hat or by certified developers (meaning we would put some kind of
> > referral program together).
>
>this would be very good. be very good if the consultants expertise and
>qualifications were also available.
>
> > Let me be clear that in each of these cases it would be important that
> > consultants in our community can take part, either by joining some kind of
> > referral program or by being able to license some technology we develop. We
> > need to include you in these initiatives, so that's why I'm soliciting your
> > feedback right now. Also, let me stress that Interchange's license
> will not
> > change; though we may think up all sorts of ways of charging money for
> > various distributions of Interchange, it will still be GPL, and will always
> > be available for download free of charge.
> >
> > 4. Making it easier to learn Interchange. In addition to new documentation
> > and printed manuals, we'll be offering Interchange training soon. If you
> > have any feedback on what you think should be taught, let us know.
>
>Interchange Concepts - Structure and Integration of the UI, Backend and
> Database. (big picture/overview)
>Interchange Templating - Understanding the Demo Templates, Modifying
> Templates, Creating and
> Integrating New
>Templates.
>Interchange Databases - Understanding the Demo Databases, Modifying
> Databases, Creating and
> Integrating New
>Databases.
>Interchange Markup Language - Understanding the User Tags, Modifying
> User Tags, Creating and
> Integrating New
>User Tags.
>Interchange Shipping - Understanding Shipping methods, Modifying Shipping
> Methods, Creating and Integrating New
>Shipping
> Methods.
...and I know that it is a low priority with all of this, but I would LOVE
to see more comments and POD in the source.
- Ed L.
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