[CLD] Towards a 'Green Thumb' for the CLD.

[Paolo Amoroso]

Martin Svenson <phromo at gmail.com> writes:

> ** Concerning the ALU-Wiki project description
> I quote the first sentence under "Goals":
> - "The goal of this Gardeners Projects 
> <http://wiki.alu.org:80/Gardeners_Projects> project is to help Marc 
> maintain the CLD database by adding new entries and keeping existing 
> ones up to date"
>
> Perhaps my concern is apparent right away? The specifics of the solution 
> should not be in the specification of the goals. Looking at the Lisp 

For easier reference I include the link to the page you refer to:

  Package and Resource Directory
  http://wiki.alu.org/Package_and_Resource_Directory

While I understand your concern, I'm not sure how I could concisely
separate the specifics of the solution from the specification of the
goal, or whether they can/should be separated in the first place.

I might say, from further down in the Goals section, that:

  Having a rich database of libraries and resources may simplify the
  search for reusable code, increase the adoption of Lisp by new
  users, help reverse the reputation of Lisp as a language with few
  libraries, and provide a base for a CPAN-like infrastructure.
  [a specification of the goal?]

and then state the specifics of the solution as adding/updating
entries to the database.  But the above specification of the goal is
probably overly general, because there is more to it than having a
directory.


> Directory at its current state I see two different tasks that needs to 
> be done, a) data gathering and b) data presentation . I guess data 
> gathering could be started as soon as we agree upon what data should be 
> gathered. However, I think b) needs a whole lot of discussion as to what 
> kind of model should be used. Of course, the collected data is almost 
> the same for whichever presentation model we finally chose, so there can 
> be a lot of experimenting.

In the spirit of Lisp's exploratory programming and prototyping, I
think it's better to start somewhere and hack^H^H^H^Hmodify as needed :)

Among the benefits of this is that you have something working soon,
and it's easier to get a critical mass of entries that are immediately
useful to new Lisp users.  According to a--Chinese?--proverb, a long
journey starts with a small step :)

With the way CLD works, it is possible to both extend the kind of data
that can be gathered, and change the presentation model.  In my view,
the cost of modification is less than that of waiting for the right
thing and then start entering the data.

Since there have been useful suggestions on information layout, and
offers of help with the style sheets, it may be worth adding this kind
of feedback and help as a possible additional task for volunteers.


> ** Concerning the combination of resource and package directory
> It might be well for a start to combine these two efforts under the same 
> roof, but as I see it, they are really two different projects, needing 
> two different technical solutions and internal guidelines for going 
> about working on them. I'm not that eager to work on gathering online 
> resources right now, but I'm just waiting to be able to jump in and do 
> some work on building a good package directory...

I see your point but, at least in this early stage, I think that the
activities related to Lisp software and online resources have more
analogies than differences, at least from the point of view of data
entry with the CLD.

Of course, a volunteer is free to decide which entries to work on.
There is no requirement to work on both resources and packages, just
packages is perfectly fine.  Perhaps I should make this more clear in
the proposal.


> I do apologize that my english is somewhat lacking, it's been awhile :-)

Rumors of my nomination for this year's Pulizter Prize are greatly
exaggerated :)


Paolo
-- 
Lisp Propulsion Laboratory log - http://www.paoloamoroso.it/log