Hi! * Richard Atterer <richard@2006.atterer.net> [060531 22:17]: > > If no one else volunteers (or has a good idea on how to automate checking > > the contents for up-to-dateness), I'll try to do that as my time permits > > to keep that data in good shape. > That would be very cool! Ugh, that's really a hard job. As said, I really don't know how to automate that, so I do everything by hand. So far I got to the beginning of Australia... > We also need a more sane format for the vendor information in vendors.CD. A > format similar to Mirrors.masterlist would be nice, and a script which > sorts the vendors according to the locale of the language used on the page. > Oh, and eliminate spelling out the full shop URL, only create a link, and > make the table more compact in the process, and... and... :-) What would be even cooler: The user has a form, where he can specify wher the shipment goes to (you may add your sorting by locale idea here), and chooses which architecure and which kind of medium he would like to have (and perhaps checkboxes for "not together with non-free", "only official CDs, no vendor releases" or perhaps even "only pressed nothing burned"). After that he get's a list of vendors sorted by his interest: Near vendors on the top, vendors which fullfill his request only partly at the end. Currently we don't have all the data available for that; some vendors sell for example alpha and ia-64 on CD, but i386 only on DVD. And for some vendors Debian got to big: They sell parts of the officla disc sets. Other interesting point about the webpage: It states at the beginning that we mark resellers, but we don't. And actually I'm to lazy to check that, too. So I might just remove that phrase. > > Might be a good idea, to add a log file, which vendor got pinged by > > whome, and what their reaction and consequence was. > IMHO it would be useful if there were two different mechanisms: First, a > mail should be sent to vendors at regular intervals, with a link they must > click on. If they do not click on the link (i.e. do not read mail sent to > their official contact address), then remove them from the list after a > while. That sounds like a good idea. At least we could send them their data by script, asking them if that is still up to date. > Second, the Debian CD page should be automatically downloaded. If the > current distribution cannot be found (e.g. the string "3.1 rev2" does not > occur), then also remove them from the listing after some time. > > ...or something like that. Unfortunately, it is a bit difficult to set this > up as part of the regular build of the www pages. It's even more difficult: Some have 3.1r0 DVDs and add upgrade CDs later. Checking for specific srings on the website could become very complicate, since there are to many of them. So far I already saw: 3.1r2 3.1rev2 3.1+Upgrades, 31R2, "aktuelle Revision von Sarge", "sarge von xx.yy.zzzz". As said: I wouldn't to it by hand, if I knew an easy and working way to script it ;) Yours sincerely, Alexander -- http://learn.to/quote/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
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