[Xapian-discuss] Writing a Quick Start Guide to Xapian

[Olly Betts]

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 02:36:04PM +0100, Justin Finkelstein wrote:
> I think what would be good is if we had a representative from each of
> the major programming languages that use it, so that the documentation
> is compiled of:
> 
>     o Core concepts: what Xapian is (and isn't); how it works; what each
> of the different capabilities it offers can do
>     o Then a series of worked-through examples, in a each language, of
> how to do pretty much everything

I think we need to keep in mind that this is a pretty special
opportunity and we should maximise what we can get of having a room
of people together for several days to collaborate on this.  We aren't
likely to get to do this very often.

So I would propose that the aim should be to structure what we write
such that it is easily to slot in a version of every example in every
supported programming language, rather than we should aim to actually
write all those examples during the sprint.  It is easy for somebody
to contribute an example in another language once the framework is
there, and this is something which doesn't need several people in one
place to do.

Essentially we can crowd-source the translation of examples after the
sprint, and spend the sprint time working on covering more ground.

We probably wouldn't get a representative of each of the major languages
there either, and trying to write example code in a language you aren't
fluent doesn't seem ideal.

> To me, this would produce what I believe is commonly called a
> 'cookbook', giving people a real head-start in adoption.

Yes, I agree this is probably the sort of thing we want to write.

> In addition, my company'd still like to offer our design services for a
> fancy redesign of the site (for free, in return for a link/credit
> somewhere), if there's interest.

I said we were interested before, but nobody got in touch:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.search.xapian.general/8841/focus=8842

Cheers,
    Olly