Preparing data for collaboration

One of my New Year's resolutions is to open The Linux Alternative Project to collaboration.

I'm pretty much set against a wiki. In my opinion, wiki's are bloated, spam magnets and not shared hosting friendly.

I'm looking at my options. Right now I'm thinking of using the same model that perl101.org is using. Organize the data, use some sort of a HTML/CSS compiler to create the static site, and use version control for collaboration.

For some more reference, here is perl101.org's code:
[github.com]

We gain:
- Collaboration
- Version control (it's good, in general)

Possibly annoyances .
- No instant gratification. There still a review process, and publishing.
- I'm leaning toward using git. git isn't newbie friendly. But it has the features I like.
- sending in patches isn't newbie friendly either.

To move toward this or any other system, I have to start organizing the data into a friendly format. I'm leaning towards YAML right now. There are YAML parsers for most languages and the syntax is easy to read and edit.

The HTML/CSS compiler I'm looking at is markdown(http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/). A good way to keep the style and data separate.

Please feel free to reply with ideas you might have, positives and negatives or anything else you want to chime in with.

Thanks!

Hello, i stepped upon your page today as I was looking for alternatives to dvdrip which keeps failing on many linuxes lately. Then I looked at the site and noticed that the list could use a bit of freshen up and adding some more projects/details.

I am all up for it to help on the matter. Been a long time Linux user and still am discovering new apps as I surf.

To this effect, I registered on the forum today and will be happy to help. Let me know. Merry Christmas

Steph

Hi Steph,

Yes, the list needs to be updated. Right now I'm working on the technical details on how exactly I'm going to do this. As you see in my original post, I need input what would be comfortable doing.

Do you have experience with cvs/svn/git?

I had a response on the blog, which I primarily use as the RSS feed generator.

Quote

Despite the name, Ikiwiki might be what you are looking for. You can turn off the ability to edit from the web, and simply allow editing via a backend revision control system like git. I am setting it up now, and although it is not perfect it sounds like it might meet your needs

Paul's reply was interesting. Ikiwiki looks interesting but I'm not sure if it would be shared hosting friendly. I might test it out out here in a few days.

I also found PWP Wiki Processor that looks semi interesting.

smk Wrote:
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> Do you have experience with cvs/svn/git?

Hello, yup mostly with git, and svn as a user, not as commit

Steph

Quote

FRLinux Wrote:

Hello, yup mostly with git, and svn as a user, not as commit

Steph

Great. I'm leaning toward a solution that uses version control. I'm just wondering how many people, who want to help, will be limited with unfamiliarity of version control.

I'm still leaning towards having the site generated by a set a scripts from some sort of easily readable and editable file.

As for markup, I'm looking at Textile. Thoughts?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2010 11:25AM by smk.

I'm still looking for feedback on this!