Subject: [Tools-discuss] Comments on wg status pages

From: Thomas Morin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:09:29 +0100

Hi, 

I just wanted to say that I'm pretty impressed with the tools being
built on tools.ietf.org. I want to thank you for this useful work.

1) About wg status pages, I have one comment : the nice upload feature
that allows me to upload an XML version of my draft, doesn't seem to
really work. The page I've got after the upload contains a link to the
doc, but when I come back (later) on the draft page, that link is gone.
Is this a bug ?

2) the HTMLized agendas have a drawback : they don't link to text
versions of the draft (they link to htmlized versions). This is a pain
when you want to download a bunch of drafts, before a meeting, to have
them on your disk and no need for the network to be up, or for printing
them with something else than your browser.  
I would dare to suggest the following : 
- make draft-name a link to the raw text file
- put a (very) little "HTML" icon, linking to the htmlized version
Alternatively, you could also chose to only link the raw text version.

3) It would be nice if wg status pages did also link to meeting
proceedings.

Cheers,

-Thomas

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 19:48:52 +0100

Hi Thomas,

> doc, but when I come back (later) on the draft page, that link is gone.

Yes.  The probable cause is that we now have two tools servers, and
I've not arranged for two-way replication; quite to the contrary there's
deletion of non-matching files on the secondary server.
I'll have a look at this.

> Alternatively, you could also chose to only link the raw text version.

There's already a plan to complement the html-ized drafts with a link
to the raw text file, draft status information, etc.  I think this
would work for you?

> 3) It would be nice if wg status pages did also link to meeting

Umm - the meeting minutes are provided there already.  How would you
like to link to the proceedings?  It's not trivial, as the proceedings
don't follow a consistent URL pattern - they sit on different servers
and use year/month naming instead of meeting number naming.  If you'll
explain what you don't find in the current pages, I'll see if I can
work out a good way of providing it.  (If the pain of providing
proceedings links has to be taken, I'll put it on the list, but it
_is_ a pain...)

	Henrik

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From: Thomas Morin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:36:38 +0100

> to the raw text file, draft status information, etc.  I think this

More or less, I'd say, since that doesn't really fit the right-click +
"save as.." pattern, which is more efficient when you do it directly on
the WG agenda.

> proceedings links has to be taken, I'll put it on the list, but it

I was thinking that using the datatracker proceedings pages might
perhaps be done
(https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/proceeding_interim.cgi?meeting_num=64).
The missing thing is per-WG URLs, but maybe the tool team could have a
way to have HTML anchors added to the datatracker pages (?).
In any cases, I think the URL above could be usefuly provided as a
general per-meeting link on the tools.ietf.org pages (if per-WG link is
not feasible).

Cheers,

-Thomas

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:31:31 +0100

> "save as.." pattern, which is more efficient when you do it directly on

Mmm, I see.  But I don't really see why you can't right-click and save
the html-ized version - the formatting is the same and the size overhead
very small...  I'm trying to understand the difference, and why raw text
would be better in this case?

> (https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/proceeding_interim.cgi?meeting_num=64).

Oh, I see.  Not really the proceedings, then, but the meeting materials
page, in order to have the meeting slides during the meeting?

> general per-meeting link on the tools.ietf.org pages (if per-WG link is

Yes, a link to the meeting materials page could be put in.  But I'd still
like to understand what your ideal scene looks like - it now sounds as if
the most bothersome case - link to the proceedings - wasn't really what
you were after, so I'm trying to pin down the essence of what you'd want
here...

	Henrik

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From: Thomas Morin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:26:18 +0100

> would be better in this case?

When reading the agenda, I'd like to right-click+save-as the drafts.
It can't currently be done easily because, the filename proposed is
"rfcmarkup.cgi" for all files.  That is the first small issue.

It could be an improvement to have the draft name be the suggested
filename for save as (e.g. by playing with apache's mod_rewrite to have
URLs appear like "../rfcmarkup.cgi/draft-foo-....txt.html").

But the second thing is that, for easy printing (like to read in the
plane before the meeting:) it seems to me quite preferable to have
the .txt as input to [your prefered pretty printing tool].

That's why I was suggesting two links: one to the raw txt file, one to
the htmlized file.

> page, in order to have the meeting slides during the meeting?

Yes, I think quick links to the meeting presentations (I thought they
were called "proceedings") would be very useful (more for reference
after the meeting, since they usually are not online before).

> you were after, so I'm trying to pin down the essence of what you'd want

Well, its indeed links to the meeting presentations that I'd like to have.
These are linked both from "datatracker meeting materials" pages and from the "meeting proceedings" to the same 
(cumbersome) URLs ("../aug05/l3vpn-2.pdf").  But with anchors added to the "datatracker meeting materials" 
pages, it could become a reliable linking pattern like : https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/meeting_materials.cgi?meeting_num=64#l3vpn

I hope my suggestions are clearer now. Thanks for your patience... :)

-Thomas

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From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:08:50 +0100

Hi Thomas,

> Henrik Levkowetz: 
[...]
> "rfcmarkup.cgi" for all files.  That is the first small issue.

Ah! That certainly is an impediment!  Ok, got that.

> the .txt as input to [your prefered pretty printing tool].

Ok, could you give me an example of one where the result differs?  I'm
mostly using a2ps myself, and I haven't noticed any trouble in this
respect...

> That's why I was suggesting two links: one to the raw txt file, one to

Yes.  My problem is of course that I need to understand why a certain
proposal makes sense...

[...]
> after the meeting, since they usually are not online before).

Right.  (I think you will find that with the new upload system, meeting
materials will increasingly be in place at least during the meetings,
from the meeting materials page).

> Well, its indeed links to the meeting presentations that I'd like to
> have. These are linked both from "datatracker meeting materials"
> pages and from the "meeting proceedings" to the same (cumbersome)
> URLs ("../aug05/l3vpn-2.pdf"). But with anchors added to the
> "datatracker meeting materials" pages, it could become a reliable
> linking pattern like :
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/meeting_materials.cgi?meeting_num=64#l3vpn> 

Ok, got it.   My plan has actually been to place links to the individual
presentations in the working groups agendas.  To make this slightly
more easy to work with, I've suggested that the secretariat change the
current re-naming of slides, to retain the original names.  But that
aside, I thought I could do something like this manually edited example:

  http://www1.tools.ietf.org/wg/l3vpn/agenda/64

It seems to me that this might work for you.

What I did not want to do was to dig into the actual proceedings
  (e.g., http://www3.ietf.org/proceedings/05aug/index.html)
which seem to be hand-edited and vary in link names from year to year.

Regards,

	Henrik