Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] I'm tired of being a moron
From: John Check (j4strngs_AT_bitless.net)
Date: Thu Aug 12 2004 - 19:39:11 EEST
On Thursday 12 August 2004 06:31 am, tim hall wrote:
> Last Thursday 12 August 2004 01:12, John Check was like:
> > On Wednesday 11 August 2004 06:16 am, tim hall wrote:
> > > Last Wednesday 11 August 2004 06:44, John Check was like:
> > > > I'm sure I'll get flamed, but wikis leave a lot to be desired as
> > > > primary documentation. There are ways to address this, but they're
> > > > obvious. At least to me.
> > >
> > > It's not primary documentation, The links are ;-)
> >
> > I meant in general, not specific to Agnula.
> >
> > > This is due to the fact that I'm not a primary documenter for AGNULA,
> > > I'm just using the WIKIs as a talking shop and a place to gather
> > > together information so I can post shorter links. Contributions are
> > > welcome ;-)
> >
> > As long as you didn't ask ;) How does the stuff from the wiki find it's
> > way into the primary doco?
>
> Probably by me converting it to HTML (?)
> John, I'm not understanding your point here.
> If this is more than a personal dislike of WIKI I really would appreciate a
> bigger clue :-] [if really OT: Offlist is OK]
>
That's not too far off the mark. I don't dislike them, per se. Wiki's are a
great concept, but the way they're used in practice makes an already bad
situation worse. There is already an overwhelming amount of doco, and it's
disorganized. This is of course, not something particular to linux audio.
As your reply indicates, wikis can be culled for good information which can be
brought into the primary doco, but it's not sexy, so whether it gets done or
not is a crapshoot for any given project.
I was being vague because the concept is still being tuned, and I'm busy with
some archival work just now, but I mentioned off list to Dave Phillips about
doing something along the lines of linux-sound.org, but adding MIDI
implementation charts and an API support matrix with a reporting system to
make it easy for projects to keep they stuff up to date, then linking to
projects Wikis and main doco from there. IOW if I want a sequencer with foo &
bar, a search returns appropriate hits ranked by development status with
direct links. Of course the weak spot there is getting people to use it;
That's the same problem Wiki's have, but they're conceptually too general.
As it stands now, it just takes too much time to evaluate what's out there for
linux music/audio to get any serious traction.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to denigrate anybody's hard work, but I see a
lot of things that make the current situation untenable from a business
context. It's potentially good for me, but bad for everybody else that's
interested in linux audio as a tool and not interested in the geekery
aspects.
> cheers
>
> tim hall
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