[Conglomerate] What is Conglomerate?

[Dave Malcolm]

I've been updating the Conglomerate website and I'm wondering how people
feel about a change to the description and stated goals of the project.

Currently the website has a very old description of Conglomerate as a
client/server content management system.

However, Conglomerate as it currently stands is purely a client-side
thing - an XML editor for end-users.

This reflects my personal interests - I'm keen on having a user-friendly
XML editor, potentially with support for connecting to various CMS
systems, but I'm not especially interested in writing my own CMS.

I know that at least one person out there agrees with me:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121340

So I'd like to reposition the project so that it's firmly on the
client-side, as a user-friendly XML editor. But I'm wary about simply
updating things, especially the stated goals of the project - how do
people feel about such a change? Users? Developers? Founders of the
project?

Also: are there any CMS systems that we should support? Do we need to
even bother supporting CMS systems?

Thoughts?

[Paul Smith]

Post by Dave Malcolm
Also: are there any CMS systems that we should support? Do we need
to
even bother supporting CMS systems?
Thoughts?

I don't know whether calling it a CMS is a bit over the top, but CVS
support would be dead handy for me - it also occurred to me that this
is the kind of thing the "Save a Copy" menu item would be for, although
perhaps it would be better named "Save a Version" or "Save a Revision".

Or of course there could be a totally separate CVS menu with CVS
commands like diff in - although as Sean and Geert found, any diff tool
would have to silently ignore whitespace differences, and only alert
real content changes!

=====
Paul Smith
Postgraduate Student
Department of Mathematics
School of Engineering, Computer Science,
and Mathematics
University of Exeter
(Laver building room C96, Tel X3990)





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[Roberto Rosselli Del Turco]

Post by Paul Smith

Post by Dave Malcolm
Also: are there any CMS systems that we should support? Do we need
to
even bother supporting CMS systems?
Thoughts?

I don't know whether calling it a CMS is a bit over the top, but CVS
support would be dead handy for me - it also occurred to me that this
is the kind of thing the "Save a Copy" menu item would be for, although
perhaps it would be better named "Save a Version" or "Save a Revision".
Or of course there could be a totally separate CVS menu with CVS
commands like diff in - although as Sean and Geert found, any diff tool
would have to silently ignore whitespace differences, and only alert
real content changes!

Adding CVS support might be a little overkill for an XML editor: only a
fraction of those working with XML files need to commit their files to a
CVS tree (I might be totally wrong, of course :) There's already a very
good diff/CVS tool, Meld.

Ciao

[Joakim Ziegler]

Post by Roberto Rosselli Del Turco

Post by Paul Smith
I don't know whether calling it a CMS is a bit over the top, but CVS
support would be dead handy for me - it also occurred to me that this
is the kind of thing the "Save a Copy" menu item would be for, although
perhaps it would be better named "Save a Version" or "Save a Revision".
Or of course there could be a totally separate CVS menu with CVS
commands like diff in - although as Sean and Geert found, any diff tool
would have to silently ignore whitespace differences, and only alert
real content changes!

Adding CVS support might be a little overkill for an XML editor: only a
fraction of those working with XML files need to commit their files to a
CVS tree (I might be totally wrong, of course :) There's already a very
good diff/CVS tool, Meld.

I think a large number of users, especially early users, will use
Conglomerate for documentation for free software. Almost all that's
maintained in CVS. Also, CVS would be a good start for defining an
interface that could later be used for CMS systems, etc.

Meld is very nice, I wonder if it could be made XML-aware? Diffing the
raw XML is not the most friendly way to look at diffs, I think. If Meld
could be made XML-aware and perhaps turned into a library or something,
so Conglomerate could invoke it/use it as a widget/dialog window to
display diffs, that would absolutely rule.

[Steinar Bang]

Post by Paul Smith
I don't know whether calling it a CMS is a bit over the top, but CVS
support would be dead handy for me - it also occurred to me that
this is the kind of thing the "Save a Copy" menu item would be for,
although perhaps it would be better named "Save a Version" or "Save
a Revision".

I'm using integrated CVS support in Emacs, ie. my current XML editor,
and it works great.

In emacs CVS checkin/checkout is completely separate from saving the
file (except that you have to save a file to be allowed to check it
in).

There's actually two separate CVS modes:
- there's PCL-CVS which gives you an overview of your workspace
- there's VC mode which works on a single file, and that can be used
to diff a file with other versions of the file, list the log for the
file, commit it, etc.

I would expect more of a CMS than what I get from CVS, though.

Post by Paul Smith
Or of course there could be a totally separate CVS menu with CVS
commands like diff in - although as Sean and Geert found, any diff
tool would have to silently ignore whitespace differences, and only
alert real content changes!

I couldn't disagree more. Whitespace in XML is significant, if
nothing else, for indentation for easy readability.

If there is whitespace difference, the tool should preserve it.