Open Collector Development
This site is for development of the new versions of the OpenCollector site. The new sites (Russian and English, to
start) will use XML-based formats for data and XSLT for html generation.
Background
The original OpenCollector site has been running for some time, but has a number
of problems which suggest a rewrite is needed. At the same time, the
creation of the parallel Russian-language site has made this rewrite more
urgent.
Changes to be made include:
- The old site had the news and database sections written separately
(in two different programming languages), with no unified site-wide search engine.
The new site will use the same code base for all sections. All data will
use XML as an intermediate format, with XSLT to transform the XML to viewable
HTML. The programming language used will be perl. There will be a single
search engine for the site (probably mnogosearch).
- The old site was a standalone one not designed to exchange data with
other 'sister' sites.
The new site will include a custom client and server which can request
data of particular types from the sister sites, or provide it when requested.
The system is likely to involve the use of SOAP and/or RDF. This will
be invisible to normal users.
- The old site was entirely written in English.
The new site will display data in the local language by default. Where
a translation to the local language of a particular item is not available
the item will be displayed in the original language with a 'translate me'
button, to allow contributed translations.
- The data on the old site was poorly organized and sometimes out-of-date.
The old data will be revised; any dead links will be removed (and
where possible any abandoned projects will be found and archived locally).
Where possible, rather than a single link to other sites holding many
designs, there will be links to all other designs on those sites, making
it easier to search for required components.
- The old news section was poorly maintained.
There will be an increased volume of news from the Russian and English
feeds, as well as possibly section editors. A new 'ask opencollector'
section will be added. There will be new subsections for embedded designs
and radio. If possible there will be separate editors for each section.
- There was little encouragement for users to participate in the old site.
As well as continuing to allow user submissions, comments, updates, etc,
the new site will allow users to select their own options for viewing
(preferred language, topics of interest etc). This will be optional and
users will not be forced to do this to view the site. There will also
be ain automated ranking system for users depending on contributions
made to the site.
Other features of the new site will stay the same as the old one:
- The basic policy will continue to be to support free software (where
free = 'svobodnaya', 'libre') and to encourage the growth of free hardware
design in the same spirit.
- The site will not collect data on users (email addresses will be required
for some features but will not be made public or associated with any other
data).
However, apart from the core shared features sites in different languages
may have extra sections. Other sister sites may choose whether or not to
duplicate these sections.
Urgent tasks
- Write XSLT to generate forms from the XML schemata, so data can be
entered and translated over the web.
- Write a client and server (perl) to exchange XML fragments between
sites on request. Using SOAP? Or RDF?
- Design the XML:MySQL interface.
- Update the existing data to remove defunct information.
- Begin planning for the new contents.
Mailing list
Downloads
The downloads are almost certainly no use to you unless you are
involved in developing this site!
Site demo
The site demo is likely just to show the feature currently being worked
on. This means that it is often likely to be broken...
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