Re: Distros project

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Munzir Taha <munzirtaha at newhorizons dot com dot sa> wrote:
> On Thursday 20 November 2003 10:04, Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> > Mr. Munzir/Alkarouri, I am not sure what is the status of the distros
> > project. 
> > as it looks like that SAIS document was kinda used for Mandrake
> > specific issues but the intended audience is the user and not the
> > Mandrake distro developers.
>
> No, SAIS doc is still being cooked as karouri pointed out and it's intended 
> for the user. But MAPS is intended as a 'status' page (The s in MAPS) not a 
> howto page

Yeah, I'm looking forward to the SAIS doc (formerly LAS) this coming
sunday from Mr. Alkarouri.

> > The MAPS doc is more of a "howto" for
> > users (which is fine and ought most likely to change name to
> > 'mdk_arabichowto' or similar) - was that the purpose or was it
> > part of the SAIS effort ?
> 
> Long answer:
> The MAPS doc is _not_ meant to be a howto actually. This doc is born to die. 
> It's sad for me to say this but it's the truth. MAPS, RAPS and xAPS 
> (x=anything) is just to point explicitly to problems regarding Arabic in 
> various distros. If you take a look at the purpose section it's stated 
> clearly that:

I think there are two issues here that seem to have been jumbled together.

 1. The "distros" project was intended to serve the distro maintainers
    and manufacturers - so we can tell them "hey, you need this and that
    and fix this and that to get proper Arabic support - you also need
    these applications, etc".  We intended to start with SAIS to be a
    template that would tell any and all distros what we require.  So
    Arabbix would (and should) look at SAIS and know exactly what to
    include for complete Arabic support.

 2. The "distros" project has also morphed (which is good) to include
    info on various details with regard to what needs to be done from
    a user prospective to get a distro to limp into Arabic support.

The two could easily be broken into 2 separate documents.  My key concern
is #1 to be frank.  I want to give something to Mandrake or Fedora (formally
RedHat) and say "Here is what you need to include/fix and if you like to
see what we are telling the users to do/fix to limp into usability, look
at this other document (xAPS)".  Again, I want the points given to the
distro guys to be very clear, crisp and listed in an easy readable format
so they can easily comprehend what _they_ need to do.  I doubt they'd be
interested in a 20-page document; from their prospective they'll want to
see a list
or a table of what we require for proper Arabic support and what we deem
broken in their respective distros (not even the fixes just yet) and some
reference (contact info, further details, etc).

The MAPS document is clearly written to cater to the end-user (which again
is perfectly fine), what we need is something that tells Mandrake what
is broken in their distros with regard to Arabic and what needs to be
included (in terms of applications/fonts/etc) in a clear list manner
(following the SAIS outline) - it would be best if the document was short
and sweet.

The SAIS document is the key here which will be generic and agnostic of
any distro - it will include everything we require.  Spin-offs from SAIS
will cater to the distros and not end-users.  Further details on what to
fix (akin to MAPS) are then further separated.  I don't think I've said
anything new here, except to point out that MAPS will not be what distros
will want to see.  Again, we need to show them a table of applications
we want included (with a priority list) and a list of bugs/problems within
their distro -- a single page would do.

Hope that makes sense - I'm not trying to split hairs (I swear :-), just
hoping to make things more clear.

Does this make sense ?

Salam.

 - Nadim


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now
http://companion.yahoo.com/