On 18/12/2020 00:50, Lassi Kortela wrote:

> Here as in many places our main limiting factor is that we have few
> people. Some of us need to do the complex and boring parts (the
> infrastructure plumbing) so that we can get the site in a condition
> where people who are less invested in it can more easily add little bits
> here and there. Our basic problem is that most of us are overqualified
> for the infrastructure work so we don't find it as fun as something more
> creative. Hence it's slow going. The main way to get boring work done
> faster is to collaborate more instead of parceling off big boring
> projects to one person each.

I, too, have been a bit useless these past few weeks (family demands,
alas) but I should be able to dedicate a day to this project sometime
over the Christmas break / first week of Jan, if consensus can be found
on what I should do with that day :-)

My skills are *not* in the graphical design end, mind, but I can usually
produce HTML/CSS that's not too horrible for human eyes, as long as it's
plain and simple. I'm far better at writing backend Scheme, and English
copy text :-)

> Personally, my first priority would be the API server. If that was
> running so that it can periodically fetch URLs and git repos, run filter
> chains based on those, and serve the results, it would be easy to add
> more data piecemeal, query it from JavaScript, generate static HTML
> based on it, etc.

I could give that a try. Am I right in believing we have a server to run
it on, and it just needs a Scheme web app written to do dynamic parts
and a cron job written to do update-cached-file parts? Can I write it in
Chicken so I don't need to learn a new implementation so can focus on
actually writing code - or will somebody else get started on it before
me so I can just extend their work, which is a lot easier to do on an
unfamiliar implementation than starting afresh as the foundation will
already be laid? What's the list of things it should do, in priority
order so I can do as many as I can fit into a day? Would anybody like to
join me on the day (if schedules align) to pair on it?

--
Alaric Snell-Pym   (M0KTN neé M7KIT)
http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/