PHP website - OS Convention - ThoutReader

Dear Goba, It has been some time since I have last communicated with you. Please give me the opportunity to explain what will happen at the Open Source Convention in Portland, OR on July 27-30th. At the OS Convention, OSoft.com will release our ThoutTReader to the Open Source community. The final release version is done and will be uploaded into SourceForge just prior to the meeting. Here are some key developments that you should know about: Yesterday, we were approved by MySQL to have their documentation converted to and listed on their website in the ThoutTReader format. At the MySQL convention, representatives from Zend had the opportunity to see the pre-release version of the ThoutTReader and mentioned that they would endorse the idea of providing PHP documentation on the PHP website once the Reader was done and we had vertical content. We are prepared to do that (See following note). The value of this is huge. For example, when a user searches for the term "preg_match", not only would they get the results from your documentation but also from the other PHP related books that show tips, tricks, screen shots, etc. We have signed a contract with Wiley Publishers to release a number of their top selling books including PHP5 and MySQL Bible by Tim Converse and Professional PHP 5 by Steven Nowicki et al. We are in discussion with other publishers as well. In an earlier message, you wrote back to me and said: "I also think that the best way to see how all this works will be to try out your beta version. It seems that your reader implements some of the functionality we always wanted to provide in our offline manuals (though not all of them :)." Our July 27 release is awesome and significantly better than the release found on SourceForge. Our permanent website is almost completed. You can get a sneak peak at it by going to www.osoft.com/store. We need to add our graphics and finalize the style sheets but the important information is there. We have been approached by a number of top web hosting companies in the US to provide the ThoutTReader in their control panels for their clients. They believe the ThoutTReader will reduce tech support calls, save money, and provide great value to their clients at no cost. Novell is interested in using the ThoutTReader for converting their Eclipse documentation into one standard format. Our major world-wide launch commences at the OS convention on July 27-30 in Portland, OR. Like Zend, we will be there: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/29/exhibitors.html (we are on the exhibitor list right above Pearson). Our goal is to distribute the unaltered PHP documentation in the ThoutTReader format and give users of PHP the ability to browse, search, bookmark, and append ALL of their documentation in one common format at the same time. We have even provided a way to drive users directly to your website for additional information. We would like to accomplish this prior to the OS Convention. The ThoutTReader will make a significant contribution to the Open Source community and the acceptance by PHP will give it the push it needs. It is not clear to me who we need to talk to about this. I know you are one of the key PHP developers and therefore am approaching you first. Please advise what the next steps should be. Mark Carey P.S. We are strong PHP and Open Source advocates. We only use L.A.M.P. applications. ============================================ Mark D. Carey President OSoft, Inc. 2511 S. Hood Street Tacoma, WA 98402 253-284-0475 mcarey@osoft.com www.OSoft.com "Mind Altering Software" ============================================ -----Original Message----- From: Mark D. Carey [mailto:mcarey@osoft.com] Sent: Friday, February 13, 2004 1:01 PM To: 'Gabor Hojtsy'; 'mark@mysoftwarehelper.com' Cc: 'webmaster@php.net' Subject: RE: PHP website Dear Goba, Per your request I am "Replying All" to your earlier message. I was a little early in contacting you in December but I am pleased to report that we have made a pre-release version of the ThoutReader available to you on our website: www.osoft.com. The content in there now is for MySQL. Within the next few weeks we will be adding Perl and PHP referenceware packages, allowing developers to search, bookmark, and append content across all installed packages. [The PHP package was a challenge for us because of its size and memory requirements. We actually had to re-write some of the code to accept it. Now we can handle any sized content.] We have also heard from several major publishers who are interested in working with us to convert some of their existing e-book into the ThoutReader format. We are in the process of setting up an account at SourceForge for the ThoutReader. We believe that the ThoutReader is an extremely useful tool for developers in general and for PHP users specifically. We will be getting a lot of interest when we launch v1.0 (April 2004) and we would like to work with you on increasing PHP's popularity and revenue. Please let me know how we can be of further assistance. Mark ============================================ Mark D. Carey President OSoft, Inc. 2511 S. Hood Street Tacoma, WA 98402 253-284-0475 mcarey@osoft.com www.OSoft.com "Mind Altering Software" ============================================ -----Original Message----- From: Gabor Hojtsy [mailto:gabor@hojtsy.hu] Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 10:40 AM To: mark@mysoftwarehelper.com Cc: webmaster@php.net Subject: Re: PHP website > I think the best way for you to visualize this is by an actual trial of our > beta release. It will be available in about two weeks. Our goal is not to > change or replace the CHM format, but to provide another alternative that is > consistent with the other OS applications into a standardized format that > can be read across all platforms. I hope this information helps. I look > forward to hearing back from you. I also think that the best way to see how all this works will be to try out your beta version. It seems that your reader implements some of the functionality we always wanted to provide in our offline manuals (though not all of them :). [Please keep on using "reply all" as usual :)] Goba