Re: [stellation-res] Installing Stellation for new users

["Jonathan Gossage" <jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Wright - IBM Research" <jwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <stellation-res@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: [stellation-res] Installing Stellation for new users


> Jonathan,
>
> At 04:11 PM 3/30/2003, Jonathan Gossage wrote:
> >At the moment, our binary distributions are for Linux only. What are we
> >using, in addition to the build-core.xml ant script? I want to make it
> >possible for us to provide Windows binaries as well as Linux binaries.
>
> At present, Mark and I have been holding off on binary distributions,
> at least until we've been self-hosting on the Eclipse-hosted Stellation
> server for a bit.  Our sense is that developers can build Stellation from
> the sources (and will need to if they are helping to develop Stellation),
> and we'd rather hold off on supporting end users until we have some
> experience self-hosting again.
>
> >Also,
> >should binaries be built as "trial" or "release" versions. My initial
take
> >on this is that "trial" versions should be built from source and that the
> >distributable binaries should be release versions.
>
> I agree (once we are ready to release binary versions publicly).
>
>
> >These issues have arisen as part of my effort to set up a user friendly,
> >platform independent front end to the documentation infrastructure we
have.
>
> Tell me more -- what would this documentation front end look like?
>
> Regards,
>
> Jim

I should have something that will show the front end in a day or two. The
problem is that I have had to learn HTML, CSS and Javascript from scratch to
be able to do the simplest of things. The basic idea is to present the user
with three documentation trails. One would document the installation process
for new users. The user would be asked to select the platform and database
they wanted and then the documentation would be presented in a tailored form
with references only to the selected platform and database.

The second trail would provide documentation for developers interested in
contributing to Stellation development or extending it for their own use.
This trail would assume that the reader had already installed Stellation and
a database and would provide platform and database targeted documentation on
setting up a development environment.

The final trail would be a reference trail that would look essentially the
same as the current documentation page. This trail would not need platform
or database customization.

I hope to have a prototype of this working in a couple of days.

Regards

Jonathan