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[phoenix-dev] Another perspective...

Title: Another perspective...

Glad to see the effort on the new web site; it be a great addition to Eclipse!

I've read over the user profiles, and I find one to be missing. BIRT is a top-level project with needs that are, perhaps, a bit different than the traditional dev. tool projects.

BIRT users divide into two broad categories: people who develop reports, and those who integrate BIRT. The BIRT team believes that, to be successful, we'll need to provide a large amount of material for both users. Material will include:

* Example reports
* How-to material
* Discussion (wiki)
* Tutorials
* FAQs
* Install & integration instructions
* Reference material

And more. Of course, the integration folks are experts at working with terse technical info. However, the report developers are "app developers" with strong business skills, but with perhaps a lighter hard-core technical background. They appreciate tutorials, examples, how-tos, etc.

Thus far, we've created our own "micro" CMS to hold the content we've created to date. Some of the advantages of the current system we'd like to preserve are listed below. I'm a newbie to the world of CMS, so it may well be that all of these are standard features of CMS systems.

* Ability to create large body of content using a standard HTML editor. (We have scripts that "transmogrify" the page into something that looks like an Eclipse frameset.)

* Use of CVS to version & release content. Today, we update the content constantly, and CVS provides a great, Eclipse-integrated way to do so.

* Ability to have some pages come from "static" HTML, and others from PHP scripts, but have a common look.

* BIRT-specific menu structure that follows the user as he navigates the site. (If the user opens the FAQ area, the menu changes to show all the FAQs available, for example.)

Further, over time, we plan to add reference material that allows user annotations, such as the manual pages at php.net. We'd like to ensure that the CMS system can assist, perhaps with custom-built extensions. That is, how can we create our own complex content, but wrap it in a standard Eclipse "portal"?

In summary, another user that could be added to the profile would be "project webmaster" who wants to create rich content specific to that project using a variety of project-specific tools. This is more than posting a page or two. It would be roughly similar to the reference content at php.net.

We're looking forward to the new system!

Thanks,

    - Paul

Paul Rogers
BIRT PMC


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