[Python-Dev] http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel still available

[Tim Parkin]

Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> Georg Brandl wrote:
>>If something like Fredrik's new doc system is adopted
> 
> don't hold your breath, by the way.  it's clear that the current PSF-sponsored
> site overhaul won't lead to anything remotely close to a best-of-breed python-
> powered site, and I'm beginning to think that I should spend my time on other
> stuff.
> 
> I find it a bit sad that we'll end up with a butt-ugly static and boring python.org
> site when we have so much talent in the python universe, but I guess that's in-
> evitable at this stage in Python's evolution.
> 
> </F>
Some very large sites - and some may say some very interesting, very
large sites - are delivered as static html (for some time the two
biggest sites in the uk were both delivered as static html, one of which
was bbc.co.uk and the other was sportinglife.com for which I used to be
the main web developer. As far as I know the bbc and sporting life still
both use static html for a large portion of their content).

Regarding the python site, it was a concious decision to deliver the
pages as static html. This was for many reasons, of which a prominent
one (but by no means the only major one) was mirroring.

One of the advantages of a semantically structured website that uses css
for layout and style is that, as far as design goes, you are welcome to
re-style the html using css; we can also offer it as an alternate
stylesheet (just as I've added a 'large font' style and a 'default font
settings' style). However, design is a subjective thing - I've spent
quite a bit of time reacting to the majority of constructive feedback
(probably far too much time when I should have been getting content
migrated) but obviously it won't please everyone :-)

As for cutting edge, it's using twisted, restructured text, nevow, clean
urls, xhtml, semantic markup, css2, interfaces, adaption, eggs, the path
module, moinmoin, yaml (to avoid xml), etc  - just because it's
generating all of the html up front rather than at runtime doesn't mean
that it's not best-of-breed (although I'm not sure what best-of-breed
is; I'm presuming it's some sort of accolade for excellence in python
programming; something I don't think I would be qualified to judge,
never mind receive).

However, back to the Goerg's comment, we could use mod_write to map:

/lib/sets

to:

/doc/lib/module-sets.html

with

rewriteRule ^/lib/(.*)$ /doc/lib/module-$1.html [L,R=301]

(not tested)

Whether that is a good idea or not is another matter.


Tim Parkin