Re: Policy Process (was: Bug #89867: Where to place web-accessible images)
On Mon, 2 Sep 2002, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Matthew> Based on the proposal's use of http://localhost/, or some
> Matthew> other criteria?
>
> Right now, if I arrange for images to be referenced in
> /var/www/, they are accessible elsewhere (I did something like that
> when I used to maintain LaTeX2HTML -- the images were available both
> locally using a fil:// url as well as from off machine).
What magic, precisely, did you use to achieve that? Apart from having the
whole HTMLized document in /var/www (which, IIRC, we do here - I don't
manage documentation) and using proper relative links.
> Were I to follow this proposed polisy, that would not be the case.
That is true. We'd need to place a symlink of /usr/share/images in /images
(noooo, I'm not suggesting that!).
What is important, though, IMHO, is that there is a consistent place to put
images, which is guaranteed (as far as practicable, anyway) to be available
by the web server. This prevents such problems as sparked this amendment -
putting images in /usr/share/doc <shudder> - and also, if we can make it
somewhere other than /var/www, reduces the chances of breaking locally
created websites. I've always thought of /var/www as being pretty much like
/home - there might be default contents in there on install, but after that
we leave it well alone.
I think, also, that your experience with LaTeX2HTML might have been
different to what this amendment is proposing. Not that anything which may
be a picture viewable by a web browser go in /usr/share/images/, but that
images which come with a package for web pages go there (hence the
by-package naming, a-la /usr/share/doc).
> Matthew> Also, I've noticed recent discussion on teams that are
> Matthew> seriously short of manpower, and -policy editors was one of
> Matthew> the groups that came up.
>
> Perhaps. But the part we need most help with is flushing out
> the issues in the BTS, updating the bugs to reflect the current
> status, and kick starting moribund discussions (or flushing the
> issues out).
I'll get onto that, then, I guess.
> We are also on the cusp of starting a rewrite of policy as a
> tight, specs/standards document, and a good practices document (look
> for the discussion between aj and Julian in this list). So, looking
> at items in current policy, and deciding where they belong in the new
> set of documents would help the process.
I think I'll triage bugs for a while, since I'm not particularly familiar
with the exact scope of the two documents. I know the general idea, and I
agree, but not being a big part of the discussion, I'm hesitant to stomp in
with my size 11's and do damage.
> The actual writing to CVS and uploading the package itself is
> less of a bottleneck, but we'll need to get more people in that set
> as well.
Well, if there is cutting-and-pasting that needs to be done, I'm more than
happy to pick up my trusty text editor[1] and do some block shifting. I can
string sentences together, too, if that's needed. <g>
[1] Not going to start an editor war by mentioning which one...
- Matt
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