Hi !

It's now almost 4 months since my last update of the Pegasos book.
Most of the Linux part is now obsolete and I still haven't received any Linux part translation in another language, and those days I don't really find enough motivation to continue.

So here is the big question : shall I transform the Pegasos book into an ebook only dedicated on the Pegasos & MorphOS, as MorphOS is easier to follow while things changes very slowly.

At the moment, the updates are really the big problem for the Peg book. That's too much work I can't handle (and don't want to handle) anymore alone without considering english translation which makes a lot of work (and I guess it's not a very good translation as english is not my natural language).

So I think I can't/don't want to continue on the same way of doing things. For example, Ubuntu and Suse installation part are now outdated. I also want to do a Gentoo+MythTV tutorial but things are moving even faster on Gentoo so it can't be very reliable at the end.

So I was thinking about deleting all the linux/mac on linux sections of the Pegasos book and transforming it into wiki pages in various languages (the main language would not be french anymore but english).
That would be the "The Pegasos Linux Wiki" .
We then could split all things into translatable sections/chapters for various languages...

So... What do you think of it ?
Is this the end of the Pegasos book ?
Do you have any suggestions ?

You're right. It's impossible to keep updated docs for several
Linux distributions. What you publish today is outdated next
week when another-major-application gets modular.

Geoffrey, there have been times when we felt that way about the Pegasos itself (Betatester, Pegasos I April1, April2, Pegasos II, 7447A, 7448)! What if we figure out a way to turn all that great work into a wiki? We would support you to do that.

R&B

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com

@bbrv : the cool thing would be a wiki dedicated to Linux on Pegasos (why not here on PPCZone for registred users?) where you could get all content for an offline reading by "PDF"izing all content in a click for any available language (so that you would obtain an up to date "Pegasos Linux Book").
Nuno (the Portuguese translator) had many ideas about wikis and translation...
The problem is that I don't have enough time to do this on WikiPeg's wiki (which is only available in french at the moment).
Could Genesi & PPCZone handle this ?

Note that for the MorphOS section, I would still keep it in the Pegasos **morphos only** book. I could also split it in two subbooks, so we would have :

- The Pegasos book - vol 1 : hardware
- The Pegasos book - vol 2 : MorphOS
- The Pegasos book - vol 3 : Linux and Mac On Linux (automatic generation from wiki pages)

We should do something like this.

R&B

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com

geoffrey_charra,

First I would like to say its very impressive work You have done with the Pegasos Book.

The below is my personal opinion.

I think You should try to focus on Pegasos & MorphOS. MorphOS, its software, its developers and all people there are around needs all support it/they can get. Also people who creates special things for the Pegasos, like Live-environment CD's and such things also needs all support and feedback they can get.

Linux as desktop, should ideally work 'the same' independent of platform You do run it on, and different distributions have different flavours. For most questions that comes up concerning Linux/Distributions are answers to find in their respectively support portals/forums. Of course some questions are Pegasos specific, but they could then hopefully most often be answered in forums or in wikis, like here on PPCZone or other Pegasos forums.

Gunne

The next Pegasos book will not include any linux things anymore.
The "old" linux things will be on wikipeg.org, then anyone who wants to help, will be able to do it.
Then if Genesi makes a wiki on PPCZone, it will be moved here.

Hi!

I wish you much fun with your further work on
your PegasosBook!

ps: shame on me as i still havn't completed my howtos
for you....

Well, I we do a linux wiki, you will able to do it online

Turning a Wiki into PDF is a very laborious idea. It's possible, but you lose all the benefits of it being a Wiki (also it goes through XSLT, Latex, PDFLatex etc. and loses a bunch of stuff in the process).

We can host a Trac project for PegasosBook, and single pages could be converted to PDF easily. I think most people don't really download PegasosBook and print it, it's just an offline convenience and it would only be done for parts of it (a page on Linux install, or a page on something else relevant) rather than the entire manual.

By the way I loathe the concept of a Wiki, I think they are unmaintainable, unnavigable messes which do not give users any more information than simply correctly formed and pretty HTML can. The kind of information that goes into a Wiki is usually the same as we have in our Articles range; and the kind of effort required to put it into a Wiki is greater. Also, if nobody is writing articles for PPCZone verbatim, nobody is going to edit into a Wiki either.

Also; administering 1000s of new accounts for Wiki admin (PHPBB and Wikis don't integrate well) just to edit data, and the pure adminstration hassle of vetting pages, stopping spammers and rogue or nasty edits, it's just too much.

_________________
Matt Sealey

Hi !
Well I don't know yet how I could do this.
It could also do html pages instead.
I have to browse the net a bit to know more.
I don't know "Trac", is it http://trac.edgewall.org/ ?
But if things can be converted to PDF, that's just great.

Yes, I think splitting things would be a good idea anyway. I would also be better for low speed connections.
yes... Well it's the only collaborative easy way I know. But as you say, very few people help, so it might be easier for me to do html pages with a look close to an ebook output.
I agree... that's the main problem for me. The hackers are really a problem to this kind of collaborative work.

Anyway, bbrv just found a way to remotivate me
So maybe I will do html pages instead but I really would like to find a way to convert pages to PDF.

To Geoffrey_Charra:
I think about section about Linux it is not necessary to forget. It is the unique Operational system accessible on Pegasos which supports more - less Russian and similar which are not maintained in MorpOs.
As the basic translator " The Pegasos Book ", I think that MorphOs if only has won if had support and other languages disconnect initially.

Hi !

Sorry, but I'm not sure to understand your post.
Do you mean that Linux is the only OS which supports
Russian language on Pegasos, and that's the reason why you would like the Linux section to be maintained ?
Then ... I don't understand the 2nd sentence !

Im fairly sure a closed wiki would work, (I have proposed the project) like the new Blender tutorials. Each person has to have an account to submit content and each section has a co-ordinator who does a quick check to make sure the edited/added content isnt malicious then inserts it into the wiki. It really has stopped a lot of the problems that the original blender wiki had where all of a sudden almost half of the wiki would be deleted or replaced with garbage, etc.

Perhaps a database could be used as the backend and a java frontend app (maybe or html frontend) provides the wiki functionality. Nevertheless itll take a while to set up.

@geoffrey i might be able to help with some of the translations. i can understand a bit of french and might be able to fix up the translations for english

We set up a program with Geoffrey that will keep him motivated and working on this project. Thanks Geoffrey and thanks to all the others. When Geoffrey comes back from vacation we will discuss with him how to best get these resources online and available for improvement to all those that seek to collaborate.

R&B

_________________
http://bbrv.blogspot.com