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Re: I can't download 1.11.1p1 source


From: Eric Siegerman
Subject: Re: I can't download 1.11.1p1 source
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 12:08:17 -0400
User-agent: Mutt/1.2.5i

On Wed, Aug 08, 2001 at 08:10:27AM +0100, James Youngman wrote:
> Martin, let me assure you that it is there, somewhere. [i.e. the CVS
> source is on www.cvshome.org.]  I also
> downloaded it yesterday, and it took me about 10 minutes to find the
> right place.  "Please excuse our dust" is all very well, but the
> present interface is cripplingly hard to navigate around!

You're right.  It's very confusing:
        Start at www.cvshome.org
                Click "CVS downloads"; it takes you to:
        /servlets/ProjectDownloadList [I omit the domain from now on]
                Says "please excuse our dust"
                Click "Actual download pages"; it takes you to:
        /downloads.html
                Says in <h3> type: "CVS Source Distribution" with
                a link "Get it".  Click that link; it takes you to:
        /servlets/ProjectSource
                Which tells how to get the sources via CVS, but also
                has a "Download" button.  Click that; it takes
                you BACK to:
        /servlets/ProjectDownloadList

The way to actually navigate to the source tarballs is to click
on the "All platforms" button on /downloads.html.


To people looking for CVS source tarballs: the URL is
        http://ftp.cvshome.org/


To the site maintainers, may I suggest the following cleanup:
  - On /downloads.html, change the text for the "All platforms"
    link (bottom line of the table in "CVS Binaries" to something
    like "All platforms (sources and binaries)".  [The link
    itself is arguably "misfiled", since it's not just to
    binaries, but fixing that is part of the larger redesign;
    labelling it more clearly, while leaving it in place, is a
    helpful temporary fix].

  - On the result page from /servlets/ProjectSource, in the top
    section, "Project Source: ccvs", make the "Download" link
    point to http://ftp.cvshome.org/, instead of back to
    /servlets/ProjectDownloadList.

  - It'd help to add an explanatory sentence to the same section
    of /servlets/ProjectSource, saying what "ccvs" is.  Looks to
    me as though that's the internal CVS module name for the
    standard CVS source tree, but how could a new user be
    expected to guess that?  Or even better, drop the extra "c",
    which is of no interest, and fix the capitalization, making
    the section heading say what it means: "Project Source: CVS".
    Obviously, the "ccvs" must remain as the module name in the
    instructions for doing CVS checkouts, and in the link HREFs.

  - "ccvs" should be ADDED to the WinCVS instructions.  Point (5)
    says "Enter project module name and click OK".  Which project
    module name is that?  People now have to read the
    command-line section -- and already know enough about CVS to
    understand it -- to figure that out.  Change the wording to
    "Enter `ccvs' and click OK" (or whatever the right
    incantation is from WinCVS :-)  This is after all the *CVS*
    download page, not generic documentation for WinCVS.

It should only take a few minutes to make these changes (less
time than it's taken me to describe them :-), so even if they're
temporary patches that'll disappear in the redesign, I think
they'd be helpful.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        address@hidden
|  |  /
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea.
        - RFC 1925 (quoting an unnamed source)



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