Re: priorities for PEAR project as a whole

Lukas: That was an excellent article. It hit the nail on the head for the reasons I was interested in contributing to PEAR: * peer-reviewed code * coding standards * default repository for 'pear install' I think the PEAR documentation aspect of the article might have been a bit optimistic, as I find that the documentation is by far the weakest part of PEAR -- especially when compared to sister project PECL. Many packages do not provide any user documentation. Some packages simply provide a link to a web site as their user documentation. Sometimes the referred-to site no longer exists. It's not clear to me why a user that wants API documentation generated from phpdoc comments needs to search or browse through the package list of the PEAR web site, rather than finding a link that is automatically generated in the corresponding section of the PEAR manual. This effectively forces users through a navigational maze. It seems that we should also decide whether or not we want PEAR to be internationalization (I18N) capable. That's theoretically the reason that DocBook end-user documentation is required from packages; however, with most packages relying on English-only phpdoc comments for their API docs it seems that this isn't a goal that is taken seriously. This was reinforced when I was recently told that error messages in PEAR packages aren't expected to be able to be translated -- which shocked me, frankly, given the international community of contributors. So, I guess two things I want PEAR to think about: * Streamlining the Web site to better integrate packages and their corresponding documentation? * Does PEAR really want to support I18N? Dan On 30/09/06, Lukas Kahwe Smith <lsmith@php.net> wrote:

Alan Langford wrote: Somehow the model of letting n developers work alone in silence on some package and then adopting the first one that stumbles out of the gate seems woefully inefficient. It seems a lot like a competitive for-profit model in a context that's all about giving stuff to the community. I would like to ask all the people that recently joined PEAR and that care about figuring out an even better future to read this article I wrote a while ago: http://phpmag.net/magphpde/magphpde_article/psecom,id,745,nodeid,21.html It explains why things are the way they are currently. This might help in thinking about how and what to change in the future. regards, Lukas -- PEAR Development Mailing List (http://pear.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php