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A small group of enthusiastic volunteers has started to go through the links
from the POV-Ray links pages to track down broken links and validate the
descriptions. Once we've got the links data up to date it'll be loaded
onto the web site, which is currently a couple of years out of date.
We're also looking at re-organising the categories to make the links pages
easier to use and maintain. I've posted a couple of diagrams on
'povray.binaries' in the thread entitled 'POV-Ray link Categories' see
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C4464518c%40news.povray.org%3E/.
Please take a look and see if you think this is likely to meet your own
needs and those of newcomers to POV-Ray.
The aim is to finalise a design by the end of May.
Please use this thread to contribute to the discussion.
Regards,
Chris B.
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"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnect comnospam> wrote in message
news:4464526c$1@news.povray.org...
Hi Chris
If it's any help at all, I've just done a Xenu broken link render and
saved it as an .htm file. It's nearly 4MB, so if you want it, let me know
where I can send it. Looking at the report, there are a lot of things to do
to tidy the site up. (Nearly 5,500 links! About 1,600 broken).
~Steve~
>
> Regards,
> Chris B.
>
>
>
>
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"St." <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote in message news:44646f66@news.povray.org...
>
> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message
> news:4464526c$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Hi Chris
>
> If it's any help at all, I've just done a Xenu broken link render and
> saved it as an .htm file. It's nearly 4MB, so if you want it, let me know
> where I can send it. Looking at the report, there are a lot of things to
> do to tidy the site up. (Nearly 5,500 links! About 1,600 broken).
>
> ~Steve~
>
Hi Steve,
That sounds like a few more than we're looking at. We've focused just on the
resource links that are generated from a links database and we have 1044
links with 282 that were reported as broken.
So far we've fixed about half of the broken ones, but we're not going to be
updating the web site until we've checked out the 'non-broken' ones too and
finished reorganising the categories.
I'd be interested to know where such a big difference comes from though. You
didn't scan the whole povrag.org domain did you? because that would include
the newsgroups which probably contain a large number of broken links that
we're not looking to fix. If it's not that, then I'd be interested in seeing
the listing, but 4MB is too big for my email account. What does it compress
down to? Otherwise do you have a web site you could publish it onto?
Regards,
Chris B.
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Chris B wrote:
> A small group of enthusiastic volunteers has started to go through the links
> from the POV-Ray links pages to track down broken links and validate the
> descriptions. Once we've got the links data up to date it'll be loaded
> onto the web site, which is currently a couple of years out of date.
I would really consider maintaining at least parts of the link
collection in form of a wiki so maintainance work can be better
distributed. Otherwise the work you put into it now will get outdated
very soon again. If you don't want to open up the collection completely
for editing it might already help to allow everyone to add comments
(like mentioning changed addresses or updates) to every link.
Christoph
--
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.imagico.de/ (Last updated 04 May. 2006)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/
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"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message
news:446483d4$1@news.povray.org...
>
> "St." <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote in message news:44646f66@news.povray.org...
>>
>> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message
> Hi Steve,
> That sounds like a few more than we're looking at. We've focused just on
> the resource links that are generated from a links database and we have
> 1044 links with 282 that were reported as broken.
> So far we've fixed about half of the broken ones, but we're not going to
> be updating the web site until we've checked out the 'non-broken' ones too
> and finished reorganising the categories.
>
> I'd be interested to know where such a big difference comes from though.
> You didn't scan the whole povrag.org domain did you?
Yes, I did, I wasn't sure if it would pick up the newsgroups, but it did.
because that would include
> the newsgroups which probably contain a large number of broken links that
> we're not looking to fix. If it's not that, then I'd be interested in
> seeing the listing, but 4MB is too big for my email account. What does it
> compress down to? Otherwise do you have a web site you could publish it
> onto?
It compressed to 220kb's which you can find directly here:
http://website.lineone.net/~25ct/povray_broken_link_report.zip
It still may be useful to you as a visual guide.
~Steve~
>
> Regards,
> Chris B.
>
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I am not sure if I understand, why you have not your website doing it
automatically.
It is soo easy to use common PHP scripts (surely also ASP and others) to
execute each time on page load a text, if each of the links still works and
to remove those links where the target file isn't available anymore.
Why to decide for the stress to have yourself doing each few years this job?
Let the scripts do it, each time on link page load.
Best greetings,
Sven
"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:4464526c$1@news.povray.org...
>A small group of enthusiastic volunteers has started to go through the
>links
> from the POV-Ray links pages to track down broken links and validate the
> descriptions. Once we've got the links data up to date it'll be loaded
> onto the web site, which is currently a couple of years out of date.
>
> We're also looking at re-organising the categories to make the links pages
> easier to use and maintain. I've posted a couple of diagrams on
> 'povray.binaries' in the thread entitled 'POV-Ray link Categories' see
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C4464518c%40news.povray.org%3E/.
>
> Please take a look and see if you think this is likely to meet your own
> needs and those of newcomers to POV-Ray.
> The aim is to finalise a design by the end of May.
> Please use this thread to contribute to the discussion.
>
> Regards,
> Chris B.
>
>
>
>
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Sven Littkowski wrote:
> I am not sure if I understand, why you have not your website doing it
> automatically.
>
> It is soo easy to use common PHP scripts (surely also ASP and others) to
> execute each time on page load a text, if each of the links still works and
> to remove those links where the target file isn't available anymore.
You should have followed the original discusion. And thought a bit about
what your suggestion implies: With each temporary server failure links would
get removed. After some time, there would bee no more links left. And links
would not be updated to point to the most current location either.
Thorsten
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Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> You should have followed the original discusion. And thought a bit about
> what your suggestion implies: With each temporary server failure links would
> get removed. After some time, there would bee no more links left. And links
> would not be updated to point to the most current location either.
Also, in some few cases the contents of an existing page might become
obsolete and irrelevant, not worth linking.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Also, in some few cases the contents of an existing page might become
> obsolete and irrelevant, not worth linking.
Somebody should tell Google :-( Currently the English-language version
returns <http://library.advanced.org/3285/> as second hit when searching for
"povray" or "pov-ray"...
Thorsten
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> You should have followed the original discusion. And thought a bit about
> what your suggestion implies: With each temporary server failure links
> would get removed. After some time, there would bee no more links left.
> And links would not be updated to point to the most current location
> either.
Well, the outdated links don't neccessarily needs to get removed out of the
database. They could remain inside, also for future statistical reasons. But
if a link does not function anymore, it will just not be displayed anymore.
And since the test is executed each time, it will display again once the
target exists again.
Not only that. The test would include a search for certain keywords related
to that subject, or (another idea) a search for certain keywords which will
exclude the link from being disdplayed (keywords such as "porn", "viagra",
etc.).
Greetings,
Sven
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> With each temporary server failure links would get removed. After some
> time, there would bee no more links left. And links would not be updated
> to point to the most current location either.
But that also applies if humans check each link. And since humans do it more
seldom and not so frequently, the time for correcting a wrong decision is
much longer.
Greetings again,
Sven
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On Fri, 12 May 2006 20:02:27 +0200, Sven Littkowski wrote:
> But that also applies if humans check each link. And since humans do it
> more seldom and not so frequently, the time for correcting a wrong
> decision is much longer.
I don't know how Chris and Chris are doing their validation (I'll let them
speak to it), but the way I'm validating the links I'm working on is to
try the link - if it doesn't work, I use Google and web.archive.org to
locate information about the site. With web.archive.org, I look to see if
the last update includes a pointer to a new location.
I only mark a link for deletion if I can find no trace of the program any
more. If I find a copy of the referenced program or site that's valid, I
update the link with the new link information.
That sort of process is not something that would be easily (I don't think,
I could be wrong) coded into a link checking program.
Jim
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"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
news:pan### [at] nospamcom...
> On Fri, 12 May 2006 20:02:27 +0200, Sven Littkowski wrote:
>
>> But that also applies if humans check each link. And since humans do it
>> more seldom and not so frequently, the time for correcting a wrong
>> decision is much longer.
>
> I don't know how Chris and Chris are doing their validation (I'll let them
> speak to it), but the way I'm validating the links I'm working on is to
> try the link - if it doesn't work, I use Google and web.archive.org to
> locate information about the site. With web.archive.org, I look to see if
> the last update includes a pointer to a new location.
>
> I only mark a link for deletion if I can find no trace of the program any
> more. If I find a copy of the referenced program or site that's valid, I
> update the link with the new link information.
>
> That sort of process is not something that would be easily (I don't think,
> I could be wrong) coded into a link checking program.
>
> Jim
Hi,
Yes. I'm doing similar types of manual searches for content that doesn't
come up straight away. The objective of the current exercise is to get the
content updated without absorbing the time of the POV-Team.
The re-categorisation is aimed at reducing the future maintenance effort,
hence the suggestion to focus the links more towards POV-Ray specific
content and using many other resources that are now out there. For example,
the Wiki's as Christophe suggested, plus predefined Google searches (bearing
in mind that they can also bring up inappropriate URLs), links to other link
sites and potentially blogs for historical discourses. So, in the structure
I've proposed we would drop most of the links to sites containing 3DS, VRML
etc. models, but would retain links to converters that support conversion
into a format suitable for POV-Ray. We would also include links to 'links'
pages specialising in 3DS, VRML etc. and potentially links to a very small
number of very large repositories.
Even if we do restrict the links more towards POV-Ray specific materials, I
think there are now such a large number of appropriate links out there and
that it will still be necessary for us to look at imaginative ways to keep
future maintenance within manageable limits.
I notice, for example, that the
http://www.wikipov.org/ow.asp?TutorialsFrontPage wiki page lists POV-Ray
tutorials, but that it only has about a quarter of the number of links that
povray.org has on this topic. If someone is prepared to commit to update and
maintain that page, then I think it would be reasonable for links to POV-Ray
tutorials to live there and for the povray.org tutorials link simply to
point to that page. If we can find someone with the motivation to do it,
then that person could use any tools they have at their disposal to keep a
check on those links. We could maybe also consider doing something similar
with categories like POV-Ray modelling programs and POV-Ray models, plus it
would seem an ideal place to organise collaborative development projects.
I think that such pages should definitely be put in place before linking to
them though, because we don't want to create extra links to pages that are
empty or incomplete from the outset.
For Galleries I think we could encourage the use of the various POV-Rings,
so that povray.org could simply link to the contributors listings for those
rings, as well as to the IRTC pages and to the Hall of Fame.
Regards,
Chris B.
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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> Somebody should tell Google :-( Currently the English-language version
> returns <http://library.advanced.org/3285/> as second hit when searching
> for "povray" or "pov-ray"...
"NEW!: A word about the release of POV-Ray 3.0."
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Christoph Hormann wrote:
>
> I would really consider maintaining at least parts of the link
> collection in form of a wiki so maintainance work can be better
> distributed.
>
I agree. I would love to see an official wiki replace:
http://www.wikipov.org/
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Tom Galvin wrote:
>> I would really consider maintaining at least parts of the link
>> collection in form of a wiki so maintainance work can be better
>> distributed.
>
> I agree. I would love to see an official wiki replace:
>
> http://www.wikipov.org/
Certainly this would be a very interesting idea. And certainly it will
happen with the next overhaul of the website. When that will be? I don't
know yet, but I would guess in a year from now is realistic. The trouble
with Wikis is that there is spamming, so they have to be set up to be
secure, which again requires time of the webmaster (Chris Cason)...
Thorsten
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On Fri, 12 May 2006 17:54:36 -0500, Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> The trouble
> with Wikis is that there is spamming, so they have to be set up to be
> secure, which again requires time of the webmaster (Chris Cason)...
At least with mediawiki, that's pretty easy to configure as long as you
have an authentication source set up.
Jim
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Jim Henderson nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 12/05/2006 14:15:
> On Fri, 12 May 2006 20:02:27 +0200, Sven Littkowski wrote:
>
>
>>But that also applies if humans check each link. And since humans do it
>>more seldom and not so frequently, the time for correcting a wrong
>>decision is much longer.
>
>
> I don't know how Chris and Chris are doing their validation (I'll let them
> speak to it), but the way I'm validating the links I'm working on is to
> try the link - if it doesn't work, I use Google and web.archive.org to
> locate information about the site. With web.archive.org, I look to see if
> the last update includes a pointer to a new location.
>
> I only mark a link for deletion if I can find no trace of the program any
> more. If I find a copy of the referenced program or site that's valid, I
> update the link with the new link information.
>
> That sort of process is not something that would be easily (I don't think,
> I could be wrong) coded into a link checking program.
>
> Jim
If a link don't work, flag it. If it don't work for more than a week, kill it
definately. Have the
script make a log of such dead link. You can also create a broken links page. Monthly,
look at the
log, or broken links page, and do searches for those pages to see if they have moved
to a new
address or are realy gone.
At least, you save the work of finding the broken links.
--
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
When you don’t know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
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On Sat, 13 May 2006 14:15:41 -0400, Alain wrote:
> At least, you save the work of finding the broken links.
That's the easy part, really. It's finding the replacements that takes
the time. :-)
Jim
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Remember, guys, you can automate the tests. And each time someone opens the
link page, for only that moment the bad links are not displayed. As
automated tests are patient and never rest, each link is checked each time.
And here again, non-functional links can be flagged (was a good idea) with a
flag date. If that link does not work - let's say - 1 month or 3 months
after that flag, the link is removed from the databse, otherwise the flag
and the flag date is being removed.
That's how all that time and pain, and individual testing and frustration
and stress can be prevented. Why so much stress?
Sven
"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:pan### [at] nospamcom...
> On Sat, 13 May 2006 14:15:41 -0400, Alain wrote:
>
>> At least, you save the work of finding the broken links.
>
> That's the easy part, really. It's finding the replacements that takes
> the time. :-)
>
> Jim
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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>
>> Also, in some few cases the contents of an existing page might become
>> obsolete and irrelevant, not worth linking.
>
>
> Somebody should tell Google :-( Currently the English-language version
> returns <http://library.advanced.org/3285/> as second hit when searching
> for "povray" or "pov-ray"...
>
> Thorsten
That's funny, when I did it I found Chris Colefax's include files as the
second link.
...Chambers
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Sven Littkowski wrote:
> Remember, guys, you can automate the tests. And each time someone opens the
> link page, for only that moment the bad links are not displayed. As
> automated tests are patient and never rest, each link is checked each time.
>
> And here again, non-functional links can be flagged (was a good idea) with a
> flag date. If that link does not work - let's say - 1 month or 3 months
> after that flag, the link is removed from the databse, otherwise the flag
> and the flag date is being removed.
If you had read the oprigianl thread, as I pointed out before, you would
know that I said this is already beging done. In fact, we even have a
Google-like caching ever since the new page went online many yeasr ago. That
cache just isn't accessible to users for the time being.
Thorsten
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On Sun, 14 May 2006 02:04:12 +0200, Sven Littkowski wrote:
> Remember, guys, you can automate the tests.
It is already. As Thorsten indicated, there is a system in place - what
we're doing (in part) is validating the invalidity of those links and
tracking down replacements where they exist. That's not particularly
automatable.
I also have run automated tests using ht://check (I originally suggested
this when the discussion came up before and was told this sort of thing
was being done on an automated basis) on various sites (though not the
pov-ray site, since it's not needed).
It's not stressful, believe me - I volunteered to help out; if it was
causing me stress, I wouldn't volunteer for it. Tracking down valid links
for the things that are currently broken has proved to be an interesting
experience - I've learned a lot about things that are out there that I was
unaware of before.
Jim
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"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message
news:4464526c$1@news.povray.org...
>A small group of enthusiastic volunteers has started to go through the
>links
> from the POV-Ray links pages to track down broken links and validate the
> descriptions. Once we've got the links data up to date it'll be loaded
> onto the web site, which is currently a couple of years out of date.
>
> We're also looking at re-organising the categories to make the links pages
> easier to use and maintain. I've posted a couple of diagrams on
> 'povray.binaries' in the thread entitled 'POV-Ray link Categories' see
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C4464518c%40news.povray.org%3E/.
>
> Please take a look and see if you think this is likely to meet your own
> needs and those of newcomers to POV-Ray.
> The aim is to finalise a design by the end of May.
> Please use this thread to contribute to the discussion.
>
> Regards,
> Chris B.
>
Hey Guys,
We seem to be getting hung up on the first paragraph (intended to just
introduce what's happening). The main intention of this posting was to
promote discussion on the re-organisation of the Categorisations and the
Hierarchical organisation of the links pages on the povray.org site. See
paragraphs 2 and 3 above. Whether we update the links manually,
automatically, monthly or yearly, we'll need to structure the links in a way
that meets the needs of the people wanting to use them. I'm proposing
changes to a number of aspects of the structure and would appreciate
feedback about whether people think these changes are a good or bad idea.
o The current structure for example has a category for 'Include Files',
one for 'Macros' and one for 'Objects'. Although this may at first seem
logical, many Object definitions and Macro definitions are contained in
Include files and many Macros generate Objects. I've therefore suggested
that these 3 sections be merged.
o In the hierarchy that I'm proposing, I've tried to reduce the number
of levels so that most links are displayed in less clicks of the mouse.
o I've proposed some radical trimming down of content in some areas,
with some categories being removed and with some others where the current
links would mostly be removed and replaced with a small number of links that
would hardly ever need to be changed. We would then be able to increase the
number of links to POV-Ray specific content without things getting out of
hand.
Any thoughts on this?
(Anyone having problems displaying the diagrams?)
Regards,
Chris B.
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"Chris B" wrote:
> The main intention of this posting was to promote discussion on the
> re-organisation of the Categorisations and the Hierarchical organisation
> of the links pages on the povray.org site. See paragraphs 2 and 3 above.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
Not on the structure directly, but I have a question regarding inclusion of
site links versus page links in the future.
In the current links collection, sometimes a whole site with many pages
devoted to POV-Ray and other relevant resources have just a single link
pointing to the home page of the site, and a description that summarizes the
content of the entire site. One gross example is this one: "Site contains
various macro utilities and object files for download. Visit site to see
what is available." Other sites have several links pointing to various
relevant pages on the site, with detailed descriptions on which resources
can be found on each specific page.
From the user's point of view, I guess the more detailed approach with links
to each page is the more helpful, so a lot of browsing on pages just to find
out what's actually on them can be avoided. However, naturally, it will mean
more links and more maintenance. This however could be helped if people from
the community could submit links themselves which would then just have to be
reviewed by a moderator before inclusion. Indeed authors of pages could
submit links themselves and doing the most of the work on ensuring that the
resources on their sites are optimally represented in the links collection
in the right categories and with the right descriptions.
However, looking at the current inconsistency, will there be any "policy" on
how detailed to go? How many links to different pages on the same site is
acceptable? (Some of the sites of the great POV-Ray community contributors
have dozens of pages, all relevant.)
I just thought it might be a good idea to consider such things early, just
like the re-organization of the categories.
Rune
--
http://runevision.com
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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> If you had read the oprigianl thread, as I pointed out before, you would
> know that I said this is already beging done. In fact, we even have a
> Google-like caching ever since the new page went online many yeasr ago.
> That cache just isn't accessible to users for the time being.
Another idea occurs to me:
Can you have a bot e-mail the address of the page maintainers when the
links go bad? This won't help with all of the bad links, but it may
help with some.
Regards,
John
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Chris B wrote:
> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message
> news:4464526c$1@news.povray.org...
>
>>A small group of enthusiastic volunteers has started to go through the
>>links
>>from the POV-Ray links pages to track down broken links and validate the
>>descriptions. Once we've got the links data up to date it'll be loaded
>>onto the web site, which is currently a couple of years out of date.
>>
>>We're also looking at re-organising the categories to make the links pages
>>easier to use and maintain. I've posted a couple of diagrams on
>>'povray.binaries' in the thread entitled 'POV-Ray link Categories' see
>>http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C4464518c%40news.povray.org%3E/.
>>
>>Please take a look and see if you think this is likely to meet your own
>>needs and those of newcomers to POV-Ray.
>>The aim is to finalise a design by the end of May.
>>Please use this thread to contribute to the discussion.
>>
>>Regards,
>>Chris B.
>>
>
>
> Hey Guys,
>
> We seem to be getting hung up on the first paragraph (intended to just
> introduce what's happening). The main intention of this posting was to
> promote discussion on the re-organisation of the Categorisations and the
> Hierarchical organisation of the links pages on the povray.org site. See
> paragraphs 2 and 3 above. Whether we update the links manually,
> automatically, monthly or yearly, we'll need to structure the links in a way
> that meets the needs of the people wanting to use them. I'm proposing
> changes to a number of aspects of the structure and would appreciate
> feedback about whether people think these changes are a good or bad idea.
>
> o The current structure for example has a category for 'Include Files',
> one for 'Macros' and one for 'Objects'. Although this may at first seem
> logical, many Object definitions and Macro definitions are contained in
> Include files and many Macros generate Objects. I've therefore suggested
> that these 3 sections be merged.
>
> o In the hierarchy that I'm proposing, I've tried to reduce the number
> of levels so that most links are displayed in less clicks of the mouse.
>
> o I've proposed some radical trimming down of content in some areas,
> with some categories being removed and with some others where the current
> links would mostly be removed and replaced with a small number of links that
> would hardly ever need to be changed. We would then be able to increase the
> number of links to POV-Ray specific content without things getting out of
> hand.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
> (Anyone having problems displaying the diagrams?)
>
> Regards,
> Chris B.
>
>
>
>
>
Hi Chris, I am studing on your heirarchy. Taking some time to digest it
but on surface it looks great. From my experience chasing down my
links, I had one brief thought. I wondered if there might be some use
to a class of documents termed "of historical interest." A brief,
semi-formed thought though. Will have my allocation back to you by end
of day. Just waiting to see if some sites might come back up.
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"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote:
> .. I'm proposing
> changes to a number of aspects of the structure and would appreciate
> feedback about whether people think these changes are a good or bad idea.
>
> o The current structure for example has a category for 'Include Files',
> one for 'Macros' and one for 'Objects'. Although this may at first seem
> logical, many Object definitions and Macro definitions are contained in
> Include files and many Macros generate Objects. I've therefore suggested
> that these 3 sections be merged.
An excellent idea!
Another thought: There are times when a particular discussion/question in
"general" or "advanced" begs for an image to be presented *there*, to
clarify the concepts being discussed. Currently (as I understand it) such
an image should instead be posted in "binaries:images" ...which seems
somewhat "out of place" to me (and necessitates cross-referencing in both
categories--not to mention the possibility of follow-up discussions being
split between both locations.) "binaries:images" is, to my mind, a place
for WIPS and finished work. An image associated with a question should
logically be consolidated into one post. I suppose what I'm getting at is a
more open policy toward posting an image --when necessary -- in the
"general" or "advanced" sections. This IS done every now and then, but I've
always assumed the practice to be frowned upon. Clarifying or relaxing that
policy would be helpful.
Ken W.
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> An excellent idea!
>
> Another thought: There are times when a particular discussion/question in
> "general" or "advanced" begs for an image to be presented *there*, to
> clarify the concepts being discussed. Currently (as I understand it) such
> an image should instead be posted in "binaries:images" ...which seems
> somewhat "out of place" to me (and necessitates cross-referencing in both
> categories--not to mention the possibility of follow-up discussions being
> split between both locations.) "binaries:images" is, to my mind, a place
> for WIPS and finished work. An image associated with a question should
> logically be consolidated into one post. I suppose what I'm getting at is a
> more open policy toward posting an image --when necessary -- in the
> "general" or "advanced" sections. This IS done every now and then, but I've
> always assumed the practice to be frowned upon. Clarifying or relaxing that
> policy would be helpful.
>
I believe the reason for this was to accomodate people with dial-up. This
way they don't need to worry about long hitting long DL times when chacking
a text-only group. I know a lot more people have high-speed these days, but
I'm sure there are still some out there using dial-up, so I'm not sure if
this is a good idea for that reason.
-tgq
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Trevor G Quayle wrote:
>>An excellent idea!
>>
>>Another thought: There are times when a particular discussion/question in
>>"general" or "advanced" begs for an image to be presented *there*, to
>>clarify the concepts being discussed. Currently (as I understand it) such
>>an image should instead be posted in "binaries:images" ...which seems
>>somewhat "out of place" to me (and necessitates cross-referencing in both
>>categories--not to mention the possibility of follow-up discussions being
>>split between both locations.) "binaries:images" is, to my mind, a place
>>for WIPS and finished work. An image associated with a question should
>>logically be consolidated into one post. I suppose what I'm getting at is a
>>more open policy toward posting an image --when necessary -- in the
>>"general" or "advanced" sections. This IS done every now and then, but I've
>>always assumed the practice to be frowned upon. Clarifying or relaxing that
>>policy would be helpful.
>>
>>
>>
>
>I believe the reason for this was to accomodate people with dial-up. This
>way they don't need to worry about long hitting long DL times when chacking
>a text-only group. I know a lot more people have high-speed these days, but
>I'm sure there are still some out there using dial-up, so I'm not sure if
>this is a good idea for that reason.
>
>-tgq
>
>
>
Dialup here, little chance of improvement in the near future...
But I wonder if it might be practical to allow _small_ images in
text-only groups (perhaps a 100 kb limit), with the file size clearly
stated in the subject line, like "My bizarre pic [40 kb]." Where a
larger image is needed to fully depict the issue at hand, then p.b.i.
could be used.
Those who abused the privilege would, of course, be required to
participate in the Fish Slapping Dance.
Opinions?
--Sherry Shaw
--
#macro T(E,N)sphere{x,.4rotate z*E*60translate y*N pigment{wrinkles scale
.3}finish{ambient 1}}#end#local I=0;#while(I<5)T(I,1)T(1-I,-1)#local I=I+
1;#end camera{location-5*z}plane{z,37 pigment{granite color_map{[.7rgb 0]
[1rgb 1]}}finish{ambient 2}}// TenMoons
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"Rune" <new### [at] runevisioncom> wrote in message
news:446719ad@news.povray.org...
> "Chris B" wrote:
>> The main intention of this posting was to promote discussion on the
>> re-organisation of the Categorisations and the Hierarchical organisation
>> of the links pages on the povray.org site. See paragraphs 2 and 3 above.
>>
>> Any thoughts on this?
>
> Not on the structure directly, but I have a question regarding inclusion
> of site links versus page links in the future.
>
Hi Rune,
You still probably get the prize for the closest yet :-)
> In the current links collection, sometimes a whole site with many pages
> devoted to POV-Ray and other relevant resources have just a single link
> pointing to the home page of the site, and a description that summarizes
> the content of the entire site. One gross example is this one: "Site
> contains various macro utilities and object files for download. Visit site
> to see what is available." Other sites have several links pointing to
> various relevant pages on the site, with detailed descriptions on which
> resources can be found on each specific page.
>
> From the user's point of view, I guess the more detailed approach with
> links to each page is the more helpful, so a lot of browsing on pages just
> to find out what's actually on them can be avoided. However, naturally, it
> will mean more links and more maintenance. This however could be helped if
> people from the community could submit links themselves which would then
> just have to be reviewed by a moderator before inclusion. Indeed authors
> of pages could submit links themselves and doing the most of the work on
> ensuring that the resources on their sites are optimally represented in
> the links collection in the right categories and with the right
> descriptions.
>
> However, looking at the current inconsistency, will there be any "policy"
> on how detailed to go? How many links to different pages on the same site
> is acceptable? (Some of the sites of the great POV-Ray community
> contributors have dozens of pages, all relevant.)
>
> I just thought it might be a good idea to consider such things early, just
> like the re-organization of the categories.
>
> Rune
> --
> http://runevision.com
>
I don't think anyone's looking at a policy for this at the moment and I
would think that the 'best' approach is likely to vary depending on the
organisation of the site being linked to.
I think that consolidating some of the categories and improving the
descriptions may help with this.
One downside with the more detailed links is that they can more easily get
broken when content moves (or in some cases where the extension is just
changed from html to asp or dhtml).
Regards,
Chris B.
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Wow, that looks like a time-consuming task! Thanks for showing the concept
in visual form, too.
Is this going to mean a change of the www.povray.org home page links, or is
it just within the Links part there?
I'm just a little curious about how it might get more complex or simplified
once the change takes place, that's why I ask. It will obviously mean many
more pages to jump through, anyhow, won't it? Or is it being planned as a
page of link *groups* for the most part?
Something I wish I had tried to get changed over a year ago is the two links
going to my defunct AOL account where I had first used web space to store
things and that got outdated and I finally quit it altogether. Still have it
mostly mirrored elsewhere in two other places (one is
http://webpages.charter.net/omniverse/ using same file names as before).
Which leads me to ask, are the People's Pages going to be kept (and updated)
or removed? If updated, how will people go about adding/changing it? For
that matter, has a submittal form been planned? And if there is one already
I'm being stupid, of course, since I hadn't noticed anything yet while
looking the site over again.
Sorry if I'm asking too many questions at once. Main concern of mine is only
about the potential complexity your chart got me thinking of. ;)
Bob Hughes
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"Bob H" <omniverse@charter%net> wrote in message
news:4468d8be$1@news.povray.org...
> Wow, that looks like a time-consuming task! Thanks for showing the concept
> in visual form, too.
>
> Is this going to mean a change of the www.povray.org home page links, or
> is it just within the Links part there?
>
Hi Bob,
The time consuming bit is updating the links themselves which is underway. I
think that changing the categories should be fairly quick as it's mainly
just a question of putting a new number against the 1044 records in the file
we're working off before it gets loaded back into the database. This
exercise only deals with the bit under the 'Resources' tab referred to as
the 'Links collection' (http://www.povray.org/resources/links/).
> I'm just a little curious about how it might get more complex or
> simplified once the change takes place, that's why I ask. It will
> obviously mean many more pages to jump through, anyhow, won't it? Or is it
> being planned as a page of link *groups* for the most part?
The categories I've suggested should reduce the number of web pages that you
need to go through to get to individual links pages by flattening out the
hierarchy a little bit. It could increase the number of links on a page
(some of the existing categories only have 2 links on a page to themselves).
The basic structure would remain the same as at present (ie. a hierarchical
structure). The boxes listed down the left hand side of the diagram would be
the top-level category headings displayed on the first page, with most
categories leading straight into a links page, but a couple containing
further categories, as is shown by the boxes further to the right.
>
> Something I wish I had tried to get changed over a year ago is the two
> links going to my defunct AOL account where I had first used web space to
> store things and that got outdated and I finally quit it altogether. Still
> have it mostly mirrored elsewhere in two other places (one is
> http://webpages.charter.net/omniverse/ using same file names as before).
> Which leads me to ask, are the People's Pages going to be kept (and
> updated) or removed? If updated, how will people go about adding/changing
> it?
This is currently a one off exercise to get the links updated. There were
282 broken links out of the 1044 currently on the site, so there was quite a
high chance that people would hit a broken link. We've found new locations
for about half of the broken ones and will be checking the content on the
rest to make sure its still relevant. I'll post a list of the ones we
haven't found soon so that anyone who knows a new location for that content
can tell us. Those we don't find new locations for, we'll delete.
I've updated the two links you had to the URL you've given above.
I'm proposing that the People's Pages get split into two. With a category
where POV-Team members (present and past) can link to whatever they want
plus a category for 'Galleries' which would links off to the various
POV-Ring lists as well as to the IRTC and the Hall of Fame. This would
reduce the need for maintaining these links, but would leave nowhere for
direct links to user's galleries. POV-Ray users would need to register their
galleries on one or more of the POV-Rings.
Do people think this is a reasonable idea or not?
In the proposed layout, links to 'links' pages, such as one of the two URLs
on your site that you referred to above, would go into the top-level
category 'Related Links Sites'.
> For that matter, has a submittal form been planned? And if there is one
> already I'm being stupid, of course, since I hadn't noticed anything yet
> while looking the site over again.
The current exercise is intended to be something that can be completed
without absorbing the POV-Team member's time, so won't in itself result in
any changes to the future management of the links pages (such as creating a
submittal form). Once we've determined the category hierarchy that we want
to implement for the links file that we're in the process of updating, I
think we'll be able to invite people to submit new links to us before we
send the file back to Chris Cason for loading into the povray.org links
database. If this is possible I'll start another thread inviting new links.
>
> Sorry if I'm asking too many questions at once. Main concern of mine is
> only about the potential complexity your chart got me thinking of. ;)
>
> Bob Hughes
>
I'm a bit worried that the diagram may not be clear. Looking back at it a
week after drawing it I think I should have made it more apparent that the
boxes on the left are just the top level of the hierarchy and that it's
meant to be simpler than the current layout.
Regards,
Chris B.
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"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message
news:4468fb15$1@news.povray.org...
>
> I should have made it more apparent that the boxes on the left are just
> the top level of the hierarchy and that it's meant to be simpler than the
> current layout.
Actually, that much was already obvious enough, to me anyway. Just took some
long looks before I could imagine what might actually be changed then that's
where I began to get confused.
There's a lot of breaking it down into subcategories I hadn't realized might
be happening with this reorganization idea when I first read it here. So
many different things. I started imagining web pages nested a dozen deep to
get to a final destination!
> I've updated the two links you had to the URL you've given above.
Thanks for delving into that to change those to my more permanent ISP. I was
willing to wait for any options made to everyone for making or submitting
changes ourselves, supposing that might happen someday. Doubt I'll ever have
another ISP in this decade or the next so maybe that won't be needing
another change again. I've opted to get a domain and web host to mirror
stuff onto this time with the hopes both won't get abandoned.
> I'm proposing that the People's Pages get split into two. With a category
> where POV-Team members (present and past) can link to whatever they
> want plus a category for 'Galleries' which would links off to the various
> POV-Ring lists as well as to the IRTC and the Hall of Fame. This would
> reduce the need for maintaining these links, but would leave nowhere for
> direct links to user's galleries. POV-Ray users would need to register
> their galleries on one or more of the POV-Rings.
Not sure I have any input concerning this right now... maybe...
One of my People Page's links (omniverse) has a POV-Ring junction on the
page, almost exclusively unless you read the fine print there, with the
links to the rest of my site embedded into an image. My site(s) can be a
haphazard mess to stumble into. I know many, many people are joined to that
ring or others but I must wonder of the vast majority of people who aren't.
It all comes down to the willingness to add those links to their own site or
whether they might prefer to only connect up at povray.org, so to speak. I
can understand the difficulty involved for the maintainer of this site if
the additional workload of fielding and editing submissions from whatever
there is to submit, so maybe that (personal pages, like blogs, galleries,
shared files, info) should be considered as limited if done at all. In other
words, I don't really have any constructive ideas on the topic I'm just
rambling. :)
Bob
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"Bob H" <omniverse@charter%net> wrote in message
news:446917e2$1@news.povray.org...
>
> I don't really have any constructive ideas on the topic I'm just rambling.
> :)
>
> Bob
>
Ramblings are also welcomed :-)
Chris B.
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 12 May 2006 17:54:36 -0500, Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
>
>> The trouble
>> with Wikis is that there is spamming, so they have to be set up to be
>> secure, which again requires time of the webmaster (Chris Cason)...
>
> At least with mediawiki, that's pretty easy to configure as long as you
> have an authentication source set up.
I'm open to the idea of setting one up, provided editing is only open to
selected users (at least initially).
-- Chris
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On Thu, 18 May 2006 02:16:31 +1000, Chris Cason wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> [quoted text muted]
>
> I'm open to the idea of setting one up, provided editing is only open to
> selected users (at least initially).
With mediawiki, you can require a user be authenticated prior to editing
(that's how I use it); you can also disable the ability for users to
self-register - someone who holds "sysop" or "bureaucrat" status would be
able to create the accounts.
I know others (Twiki is one, I think - though I have no personal
experience with setting that one up - just as a user) can do more granular
rights management, not just for writing, but also access to read certain
sections. We use both Mediawiki and Twiki internally at work.
I'd be happy to help out in any way I can, time permitting (of course).
Jim
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