- From: Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:33:32 -0400
- To: wpd@theherzes.com
- CC: 'Patrick D'Souza' <patrick.dsouza@gmail.com>, public-webplatform@w3.org
Hi, David- Have you made a blog account? Regards- -Doug On 4/23/13 2:34 AM, David R. Herz wrote: > I am still in that group of people who can not access these > previews. > > David R. Herz wpd@theherzes.com > > -----Original Message----- From: Doug Schepers > [mailto:schepers@w3.org] Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2013 9:24 AM To: > Patrick D'Souza Cc: Eliot Graff; Julee; public-webplatform@w3.org; > Alex Komoroske Subject: Re: Proposed Blog Post for MSDN JS > Contribution > > Hi, folks- > > Sorry for another iteration... here's a (hopefully) final draft of > the MSDN JS docs blog post, greatly improved by help from Eliot's > skillful hand. (Thanks, Eliot!) > > We plan to publish this tomorrow at 15:00 UTC / 11:00 ET / 8:00 PT. > That will give a bit of time to Europeans to absorb it. > > We'll tweet right then to point to it (and retweet from @w3c), and > then repeat it a few hours later just before noon PT, to hit > lunchtime on the West Coast, and hopefully some stewards will retweet > it then. > > > Tweet (proposed): [[ Want to help us integrate our new hoard of 400+ > JavaScript articles into Web Platform Docs? Read on! > http://blog.webplatform.org/2013/04/new-msdn-js-docs/]] ]] > > > Blog: http://blog.webplatform.org/?p=335&preview=true [[ New > JavaScript Docs from MSDN! > > Apr 23 2013 by Shepazu Let’s face it, a site for Web documentation > that doesn’t have solid JavaScript docs is like a browser that > doesn’t have JavaScript. Up to now, the JavaScript topic on Web > Platform Docs has been sparsely populated, especially our reference > articles. That’s why we were so thrilled when Microsoft offered us > their excellent JavaScript documentation from MSDN. > > These 400+ articles will give Web Platform Docs a foundation to build > up a robust library describing the use of JavaScript in modern web > development. The donation is substantial, but it leaves room for a > expansion and enhancement from our community. But the first step is > integrating these articles into WPD. > > So, this is where you come in! > > > Help us transform the MSDN donation into WPD content > > Last week, Microsoft’s Kathy Shoesmith and her team exported the > whole JavaScript branch of their MSDN content from their CMS as > well-structured HTML; they also provided some support files, > including a hierarchy index in XML, and an Excel file with the > correspondence table between file names, like > “1b512146-1e8a-44a4-89da-6cc5338d15cb.htm” (shudder), and article > titles like “getMilliseconds Method (Date) (JavaScript)”. > > We converted that spreadsheet file to a JSON object, and used Node.js > to rename all the files (e.g. “getMilliseconds-Method__Date.html”) > and convert the XML hierarchy index to an HTML nested list to serve > as a table of contents, then pushed everything to WebPlatform’s > Github msdn-js repo. > > So, there’s where we are. Where we go next is up to the community as > a whole, because Webplatform is a community-based and > community-driven project. Microsoft donated the source content, but > it will be the community that takes this donation and builds WPD with > it. And let’s face it, content integration is not a trivial task. > It’s not difficult, either, but there are lots of moving parts. > > First, we have to settle what on the URL structure. How do we want > to organize the different pages within our information hierarchy, so > that it’s consistent, easy to find and reference, and avoids naming > clashes? Second, we have to make MediaWiki templates. We need to > define how each page type (object, property, method, etc.) is > structured, again for consistency and to make it easy for an API to > extract just the information needed. Third, we have to come up with a > methodology to convert the HTML content into the wiki. Converting > 400+ pages by hand would be tedious, but an automated import script > is likely to be error-prone, even with consistent and well-structured > HTML like the export from MSDN. Which sections do we use? What do we > do if we need to add structure that doesn’t exist in the original? > How shall we review all the converted documents? Should we import > first into our test wiki instance, then transfer into the main wiki? > In some cases, there may be duplicates of content already in the > wiki; how shall we resolve that? What import script should we use > (and can we revise and reuse the script from our original MSDN > mass-import back in October)? Phew! What can I do? > > For starters, you can help us answer these questions, and ask > questions we didn’t think about. If you don’t already have an > account, go create one, and feel free to participate in one or more > of our general content meetings. You can volunteer to help do the > conversion, review migrated content, or help out with other parts of > the project. All our work is public, and to help manage this process, > we created a special sub-project, MSDN-JS, in our issue > tracker/project management tool. Once you have an account, subscribe > to our public-webplatform mailing list and introduce yourself, and > we’ll help get you started. > > JavaScript is still evolving (rapidly!), so WPD community engagement > by JavaScript experts will help us evolve our content along with it. > You want to future-proof our documentation by adding a tutorial and > examples on JavaScript Futures? Go for it! > > Don’t feel intimidated by all these open questions! We’ve already got > a skilled community, like Alex Komoroske (Google) who authored most > of the site templates, Eliot Graff (Microsoft) who helped design > WPD’s information architecture, and content drivers like Chris Mills > (Opera and W3C), Julee Burdekin (Adobe), and Scott Rowe (Google), as > well as many other folks who can lead the integration… or step aside > to let new leaders take the initiative! > > What about other donations? > > We’ve gotten this type of donation before. We’ve received large > transfers of content files from nearly all of our stewards. To cite > a few examples, Google and MDN have donated many articles and > tutorials; Opera donated a great deal of their developer education > materials; Adobe offered wonderful content from their site; and > Microsoft had donated reference pages previously. It’s been a > wonderful and cooperative effort to get the seed content in place for > this project. > > For each content topic, sometimes there are multiple sources that > we’d like to use, with overlap in coverage. For example, MDN, the > Mozilla Developer Network, already has great JavaScript > documentation, and Mozilla is one of the Web Platform stewards. Why > didn’t we just reuse their JavaScript content, too? As Mozilla’s > Janet Swisher explains, that content was contributed to MDN under the > CC-BY-SA (Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike) license, rather > than the more permissive and reusable CC-BY license that WPD offers, > so for the long-term goal of making and keeping WPD as open as > possible, we needed another solution. Microsoft donating their > content is an ideal starting point for comprehensive community-driven > documentation. Having the option to select the best choices from > different sources is another strength of WPD. > > You really need me? > > Yes. Even with big content contributions like this one from > Microsoft, this site will never succeed in our mission without > consistent contributions and engagement from our community. So, > consider your effort in integrating these documents a “matching > donation” and help us make WPD the documentation site we all need. > ]] > > > Regards- -Doug > >
Received on Thursday, 25 April 2013 06:38:21 UTC