Re: Updating www.alsa-project.org?

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

Hi,

At Tue, 12 Feb 2002 16:22:35 +0200,
Juhana Sadeharju wrote:
> 
> >From:	Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
> >
> >Hmm, on what stand point was this list created?
> >from the users side, Press and Vendor Calls are not so interesting.
> 
> Yes, if Alsa stays as a private corner for Alsa developers and
> existing audio developers. But it is total turnoff for vendors and
> new audio developers. Think about it from their side.
 
My opinion is that users stand over vendors.
I didn't mention ALSA developers nor existing audio developers.

> Press section is for carefully written press news for all of us;
> the word "press" is just used for differentiate from "news".
> The minimalistic news you have seen so far goes to the News section.
> I'm personally interested in to read only about major releases
> and all the things via Press pages (even I'm not a vendor).
 
Ok, understood.
Well, I, as a developer, in general prefer to see some news (or press,
whatever called :) in the top section as found in gimp's web page,
though.


> >And I now realized that from this viewpoint, we lack the on-line doc
> >for installation, too..
> 
> We barely have any proper documentation. Checking source code is also
> outdated.

We have the INSTALL file, but it's not prepared for on-line, and not
so-called user-friendly.

Anyway, poor documentation has been always a big problem around us.
An easy-installation manual would be greatly appreciated.


> If Jackit and some central audio engine becomes popular, then
> no applications access Alsa directly (or have I misunderstood?).
> That means that less user specific documentation is needed for Alsa.

You misunderstood my point.
I mean users as ones who own soundcards and use ALSA on them.
It doesn't matter what audio engine runs.  It doesn't matter whether
ALSA is accessed directly or not.
Before starting your appliations, there are always basic questions:
whether and how your soundcard is supported, what ALSA requires, how
to install it, and so on.
Such information has been most frequently asked (I guess), and will be
in future, too.  There are much more users than developers and
vendors.

I agree to move rarely-referred docs such as API into a specific
page.  But less documentation..?  Why must we reduce?

BTW, for hardware vendors, the information like Dan's soundcard matrix
is quite important, too.  They can make a link and show that their
products actually well supported on ALSA.


> >looks like you really want to rebuild the page mainly for hardware
> >vendors? ;)
> 
> No, but getting vendors interested is an important part of the project;
> not everything comes as easily as currently supported cards. 
 
Agreed.  I really hope it, too.

What I don't agree in your suggestions is the priority of vendors over
users (don't be confused; we discuss here only the web design, not
developer's perspective :)
Other suggestions sound reasonable.


ciao,

Takashi

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