[SciPy-User] new scipy website

[Thomas Kluyver]

Hi Joris,

Thanks for all the thoughts. I've CCed the scipy-user list in this
response, so other people can pitch in as well.

On 8 October 2012 22:49, Joris Van den Bossche
<jorisvandenbossche at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Thomas,
>
> As you said on the numfocus list, there are a lot out there with interest in
> getting involved in the scipy website, and maybe I am someone like that.
>
> I am a PhD Student at Ghent University, and an enthousiast scientific python
> user, also following the lists, but never really getting involved (apart
> from sporadic bug reporting). And I also don't have that much of a time, but
> maybe every little bit helps.
>
> But at the moment, that is my feeling at least with the new scipy website,
> it is not very clear what has to be done, some kind of 'roadmap' for the
> website, where interested people can get involved.
> There were some discussions on the mailing lists, like the one in end of
> July (http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.scientific.devel/16796) ,
> but never really concrete. There was also no activity the last 5 months at
> the scipy.org-new repository.

I don't want to leap in and present a whole roadmap straight away - as
we saw with the packages question, people have a wide range of
opinions on how best to achieve the same basic aim, and I'm sure
opinions on the website will be similarly diverse. I've largely used
up my disagreement quota for a couple of weeks. ;-)

I'm assuming that we want to work roughly within the framework of the
existing 'new' site, which is a set of static pages built by Sphinx
(as is ipython.org). Although many of us are familiar with Sphinx,
there is a case for moving to a tool more suited to websites than
documentation. If someone wanted to do some research and present the
case for such a change, I think we'd seriously consider it.

> At the numfocus list, you mentioned some first to do points:
>
>> - Update the front page to promote the Scipy stack we've agreed on:
>> adding Pandas & Sympy, rearranging the current distinction of 'core
>> projects' vs. 'related projects'.
>> - A page describing the Scipy stack specification.
>> - A new separate page (or pages) about scipy-the-package.
>> - Some general design work wouldn't go amiss - do we need the
>> breadcrumb bar? Can we improve top level navigation?

One more thing people can get involved with straight away. On the new
installation page I've done, there's a section for installing from
Linux distro packages. I've filled it in for Ubuntu & Debian. Could
users of other major distributions provide a short entry for each,
with the command to install all the packages, the first distro version
which meets the specification, and any other relevant info? Here's the
section for Ubuntu & Debian:
https://github.com/scipy/scipy.org-new/pull/3/files#L3R29

> Had you already an idea on how you wanted to proceed?
> I was thinking that maybe some kind of discussion document, for discussing
> an outline of the design and structure of the site we want in the future
> could be helpfull. To engage others in the discussion. For later, to see
> what still has to be done. Also, to really think about the structure (which
> pages we want, ...) we envision in the future. Not necessarily directly
> achievable from the start, but to have a goal to work to, and to avoid that
> each time somebody wants to add something adds a page and you end op with a
> mess like the scipy.org today (at least, I find it a not very clear and
> structured site). I was thinking of a google docs, but maybe something
> similar is possible on github. I think such dynamic document is better
> suited for this that a discussion on a mailing list.

That does sound like a good idea. Github has wiki pages, and of course
the current scipy.org site is a wiki. I'm also happy to use a Google
Doc, or one of the successors to Google Wave, like Rizzoma. Since you
had the idea, can you pick a platform, and sketch out some sort of
overview, so that we can start discussing and filling in details?

> Apart from the points you raised above, I was also thinking about the
> following:
> - What do we want with a lot of material on the scipy website right now, eg
> cookbook, topical software? Bring it over (but then they need an update I
> think)? Do we want something like modern version of the cookbook
> (cross-project examples, maybe integrated with notebooks), or should it be
> replaced by Scipy central?

For now, much of the content will probably stay on the existing
server, perhaps at a subdomain, because updating it would take
person-hours from more important jobs. Longer term, I hope we can get
it moved to new homes as appropriate.

Scipy-central unfortunately also seems somewhat dead. We got in touch
with the developer recently, and he essentially offered the Django
codebase to anyone who has the time to work on it. There's also work
going on with nbviewer.ipython.org, which could be the base of a new
example-code sharing site.

> - Include some specific documentation/tutorial at the scipy stack level?
> (maybe based on https://github.com/scipy-lectures/scipy-lecture-notes)

Yes, longer term, I hope that we'll develop much more connected
documentation around the scipy stack, including tutorials and howtos.

Best wishes,
Thomas

> Sorry for the long mail. It were just some ideas, see what you can do with
> it.
>
> Regards,
> Joris