Wave hello

[raph]

Hi Choz, and best of luck with getting this site rolling. I know how daunting, yet at the same time exciting it is to launch.

I've sent some private email with some thoughts, but there's no reason to keep it all secret. In fact, I actively encourage wikignoming of my words.

In particular, I'm advocating the choice of Django as the web development platform. I'm using it for the site I'm starting (ghilbert.org), and feel it to be ideal for the kind of rich, dynamic content both sites strive for. I might even be willing to chip in some code, especially if it's related to something I'm already doing with Ghilbert.

Second, I'm hoping this site is especially congenial for serious free fonts. This is an emerging segment of the type scene, and just a site that has the basic tools like a good type tester would meet some direly-felt needs. Adding good criticism (from the washed rabble, not just slashdot-style popularity contests) would be even more valuable. And I for one would be very happy to see such fonts compared critically with their professional counterparts.

In any case, I wish you the best and hope it expands to become a great (virtual) community.

[Choz Cunningham]

...I'm advocating the choice of Django as the web development platform. I'm using it for the site I'm starting (ghilbert.org), and feel it to be ideal for the kind of rich, dynamic content both sites strive for. I might even be willing to chip in some code, especially if it's related to something I'm already doing with Ghilbert.

That email is exactly why I got this forum rolling already! To paraphrase my response, and get this in the open...

At this point, I am not sure what the best choice is for the platform. Typosium's server is Ruby on Rails ready, and running MySQL5 and PHP5. I think the latter allows us to also consider Django, ZK, Pylons and few others. Since these frameworks are all relatively new,  and since I am looking for feedback on what feature set to offer at Typosium. I can't make an opinion on which is the best choice. As I see it now:

Django: Already has a volunteer
RoR: Broad, broad userbase, increasing odds of finding more who are experienced with it.
ZK: Looks very simple to develop
TurboGear: Growing fast. Very modular.

There may be an existing CMS, collaboration software, or other integrated package that can just be modified to suit our needs, as well. Until we have a planned featureset, I don't know how to decide the best method.

Second, I'm hoping this site is especially congenial for serious free fonts. This is an emerging segment of the type scene, and just a site that has the basic tools like a good type tester would meet some direly-felt needs. Adding good criticism (from the washed rabble, not just slashdot-style popularity contests) would be even more valuable. And I for one would be very happy to see such fonts compared critically with their professional counterparts.

Then, this would be a great place to tell other OFL supporters about! They may be interested in helping build the site and organization.

Typosium should have a wide selection of tools for analyzing and previewing fonts, and grow a hybrid of slashdot-style and learned-critic reviews. All the previewing, downloading and critiquing tools will be available to the creative rights holder (or their representative) of any font. The playing field should be level for free, open and proprietary fonts.

from our earlier conversation:
"I know we are planning on creating an immense set of font metadata fields. Outside of the data about appearance nuances, sutiabilty to various applications and detailed user responses, we would like to include even such granularity as separate fields for license(s), license features and license family. I would like to see downloads of free faces and demos  of commercial work from within the reviews, to increase reader feedback. If demand dictates, I am assuming this will make adding functionality, such as an OFL section [or other license-based filter] or anything else, rather simple to "turn on" at any point."

In short, Typosium is neutral on particular font licenses, but people will report on what interests them. The tools proposed may be very appealing to the OFL community, or other font subcultures.

[raph]

All of the Web frameworks you listed are good. My guess is that you could flip a coin to decide and very likely be happy with the results.

In my experience, it's pretty darned easy to get a Django instance running. On my site, I've got it running on an old Debian stable system with MySQL 4.0.x, and it runs fine. I can't imagine there would be any serious problems getting it rolling on a well-provisioned host, especially if they give you a shell and let you install your own modules (this would be important for the pycairo stuff).

I wouldn't worry too much about existing systems. Wiki-like functionality can be implemented in Django with miniscule effort, and more structured content is pretty much the question of writing the code. A lot of features, like font preview and so on, will by necessity be specific to this application. Starting from a cluttered, heavy CMS can be far more harmful than helpful - look at openfontlibrary.org (based on ccHost) for a sad example.

I think we're basically on the same page wrt licenses. All I'm saying is that if the URL "typosium.org/ofl" is an appealing page with easy font viewing and downloads, fresh updates when new fonts come out, and interesting writing about the fonts and their designers, that it will fill an immediate need and likely attract many people to the site, both as browsers and contributors. Obviously, we'd want this site to become very rounded and useful for fonts of all licensing flavors, but there is a lot more out there already (myfonts, typophile, etc) to meet those particular user needs.

[Choz Cunningham]

All I'm saying is that if the URL "typosium.org/ofl" is an appealing page with easy font viewing and downloads, fresh updates when new fonts come out, and interesting writing about the fonts and their designers, that it will fill an immediate need and likely attract many people to the site, both as browsers and contributors. Obviously, we'd want this site to become very rounded and useful for fonts of all licensing flavors, but there is a lot more out there already (myfonts, typophile, etc) to meet those particular user needs.

Attracting people is mutually beneficial, so... ok. In fairness, there should probably be a short list of sections, like a newspaper has local national, sports. What those should be we could debate over in the UX thread. It sounds like something that could be easily "delegated" to the OFL/FOSS community, too, which makes it instantly more viable.

[yoyo]

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