htdocs and gettext

[Josh Sled]

On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 18:50 +0000, Neil Williams wrote:
> It's still useful, even though our content isn't as dynamic as a 
> database-driven site. e.g. the News items would be a royal PITA to handle via 
> SHTML or "baking" because the resulting index page would be a nightmare to 
> edit.

Why would it be a "nightmare"?  I'm suggesting running the processor
(PHP if you like) once, rather than during every page-load.  It's just
string-substitution...


> <asbestos>
> I like PHP as much as you or Derek may like Emacs/Scheme so we aren't going to 
> see eye to eye on this one! Now if only Scheme was as easy as PHP . . . . 
> </asbestos>
> :-)

... The difference being that I don't care if you don't use emacs, but
the web site is part of the project.

[And FTR, I've been very vocal in saying that I think we should
*eliminate* scheme from gnucash. So you might want to revise your
stereotype.  Frankly, I think we should remove scheme from gnucash for
the same reason as removing php from the website: they are Excess
Complexity.]


> and the reason it has to stay that way is ? ??? There are more dynamic things 
> we can do with the site once this is all done.

Like what?

I've not heard anything suggested that would make me change my 
mind.  As I look around other project's websites and think about the
last N years of both gnucash and every useful open-source project
website I've run across, while trying to find information, I'm pretty
convinced that:

- simple is better than complex.

- concise is better than simple.

- static is simpler than dynamic.


> Maybe we could parse XML to make it anonymous (for bug reports), maybe we 
> could do lots of other things - just because gnucash.org has *been* a little 
> static until now doesn't mean it should stay that way.

Or, maybe we don't do those things.  We don't need them, and they are
just one more moving part we can do without.  Or, when we do find that
we need them, we can use a scripting language for JUST that piece.

In any case, I think the website should be made (and subsequently stay)
much simpler than it is now.

-- 
...jsled
http://asynchronous.org/ - `a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo ${a}@${b}`