40115 - Post specs on Mozilla website

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Documentation Graveyard :: Help Viewer, defect, P3)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Most specs are posted on gooey, which is not accessible to non-Netscape people.
This is not very open-source friendly (I think, you can figure for yourself,
which consequences this has on quality and efficiency).

I'm sure, people don't post there with bad intentions, it's just the default
place to post such things. Change that. We have enough webspace on
<http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews>, just make people post everything that is not
Netscape-specific (like AIM integration stuff etc.) there.

It's up to you, if you post specs with AIM integration there (it's no secret
anymore after PR1) or if you create 2 specs for those parts. But please let us
participate in the UI creation process.

Comment 1

[german]

Unfortunately the technical process is so complicated with CVS that us UI
designers do not the time and resources to post to the moz server.
In addition the separation is not so simple: the majority of UI specs do contain
marketing/Netscape specific information that is not to be published outside the
firewall. Again cleaning up the specs is a major effort and we do not have time
for it right now.
Also most the Netscape UI specs should go to or at least always be referenced
from the central Netscape UI clearinghouse at mozilla.org/projects/ui/netscape.
The specs we are doing are on purpose in a folder labeled Netscape, as there are
other mozilla UI specs out there like aphrodite, which are different.

Comment 2

[jglick]

As German mentioned, gooey is the place where we post our internal Netscape 
specific specs.  Getting rid of gooey isn't the answer.  

I agree that Mozilla specific specs should also be produced and posted.  Some of 
these specs already exist at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/netscape/ and 
http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/ (Under Specifications).  Unfortunately, the UE 
group currently just doesn't have the time and resources to get all our specs up 
on Mozilla.

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> Unfortunately the technical process is so complicated with CVS that us UI

> designers do not the time and resources to post to the moz server.



What I'm proposing here is *exactly*, that specs are posted on www.mozilla.org

by default, i.e. that "the technical process" uploads to www.mozilla.org and not

gooey.



> the majority of UI specs do contain marketing/Netscape specific information

> that is not to be published outside the firewall.



Most of this "secret" stuff has been discovered by PR1 or will be at least in

PR2, not?



We need to find a solution. Cutting half of the people from the information is a

save way to harm development.



> The specs we are doing are on purpose in a folder labeled Netscape



They (or a subset of them) are also the Mozilla default chrome.

Comment 4

[Mitchell Baker]

Ben

I've got a related question.  I'm wondering if posting Netscape specific specs on 
the mozilla website is the 
right thing.  We spend a lot of effort trying to keep Netscape stuff out of the 
mozilla world.  So maybe this is a place where an exception makes sense, but I'm 
not sure yet.

Going forward, it's clear that specs need to be written so that the generic 
foundation is posted in the mozilla world, and each entity wishing to build on 
this will create their own "overlay" spec that they may use internally.  

Obviously, we don't have this situation now today.  Is there a consensus that we 
ought add a lot of Netscape-specific information to the mozilla site?

Mitchell

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Mitchell,

yes, I know, if I didn't request it, I were the first one crying :).

Ideally, the Mozilla spec should be created in an open-source process, i.e.
incorporating .mozilla.ui from the start. I think, we should do this in the
future (i.e. from now on).

However, for now, I prefer to see the spec with Netscape stuff rather than not
at all. I obviously can't get the Netscape UI team to clean the specs up. But if
we have the "raw" specs, somebody who bothers (including non-Netscapers) can
still do this work.

Comment 6

[Blake Ross]

I agree with everything Ben's said.

I also can't tell you how annoying it is when NS post public bug reports based 
around a problem/testcase that's inside the NSCP firewall.  They may as well be 
posted to the internal bug tracking system.

Also, though I understand that there are certain NSCP things that aren't for 
public viewing, the whole idea that the very specs that NS is based on aren't 
available to the public just doesn't fit in (IMHO) with the nature of open 
source.

Comment 7

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

If Netscape staff are too busy to Mozilla-ize the Netscape UI specs, then there's 
something fundamentally wrong with the way the Mozilla UI is being designed.

What should be happening is that mozilla.org UI specs get hammered out by the 
community (under the control of the UI module owner). This has the potential to 
take a lot of work off Netscape staff, not to mention making the community feel 
more like they have a say.

These community specs should be put on http://mozilla.org -- not in
<http://mozilla.org/projects/ui/>, but in the relevant module section:
<http://mozilla.org/editor/>, <http://mozilla.org/mailnews/>, etc. (Why not in 
the projects/ui/ directory? Because that encourages thinking about the UI as 
something completely separate from the rest of the program, which often leads to 
poor design of the rest of the program.)

Then, Netscape UI designers should come along and produce diffs of the specs 
which suit their own needs -- adding a bit here, taking a bit away there, 
including marketing stuff in various places, whatever. And they can put those 
diffed specs on http://gooey/, or wherever they like -- mozilla.org doesn't need 
to see these specs, or to even know that they exist. They shouldn't be in
<http://mozilla.org/projects/ui/netscape/>, or anywhere else in
<http://mozilla.org/> for that matter; because that approach would be 
unsustainable when hundreds of organizations started producing their own Mozilla 
distributions with their own GUIs. Netscape-specific stuff should not be on 
http://mozilla.org.

The bottom line: If the Mozilla.org and Netscape UIs are at all similar, it 
should be the Netscape UI which is derivative of the Mozilla.org UI, and not the 
other way around.

Comment 8

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> not to mention making the community feel more like they have a say.

This bug is not about giving us a feel of control - it's about a better end
result through open-source development.

I'd like to see what Netscape engineers intend to release to Mozilla CVS in the
near future, so we can comment on it. (For that sake, I could overlook
proprietary stuff for now.)

> Because that encourages thinking about the UI as something completely
> separate from the rest of the program, which often leads to poor design of
> the rest of the program.

It is poor design *not* to separate UI and "backend" (logic + persistance). This
is a generally accepted rule of app development.

Comment 9

[lchiang]

hangas - Paul, any comment?  If we are going to do this in the future, we need 
to reopen this bug.  I'm also going to change the product of this bug to 
Documentation as it's a more general issue than just mail/news :-)

Comment 10

[Mitchell Baker]

Lisa,  
Reopening the bug would be over the question of what to do with existing UI docs, 
right?  The plan for the future being that  mozilla UI design is done through the 
open process.  Then those who want to make derivatives do so.

Mitchell

Comment 11

[hangas]

The bug is closed because we will not let gooey die.  Our internal server for 
Netscape specs lives on.  We are working with Mitchell to work on a plan for 
handling UI design for code checked into mozilla.  We need to find a way to do 
design with the mozilla community, until we get to that point we will do what we 
can to share information within the bounds of our available resources.

Comment 12

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

OK, the summary was incorrect. Adjusted. Please see my first to comments for
what I meant.

Do I understand it correctly, that Mozilla's UI will be designed on n.p.m.ui
from now on? Then we shouldn't have this problem in the future.

What is with the current specs?