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  #1  
Old 12-18-2007, 10:31 AM
John Scheffel's Avatar
John Scheffel John Scheffel is offline
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Proposal for Macro Subforums

I received a request to provide a place for members to post custom macros and LISP code similar to this German web site. Many people don't realize it, but the old CoCreate America's User Group web site under which this forum is located does have an old macro site, but it has not been updated in many years and I don't want the job of maintaining it.

http://www.cocreateusers.org/macros/macro.htm

I think this is a good suggestion, but I don't want to manage something like the German site and don't know if anyone else would volunteer to do so.

One way this could be done is to create subforums under the Customization forum just for posting of custom code. Something like:

Customization
- Drafting Macros
- Modeling LISP Code

By using subforums the code could be posted and managed by members and it would not require a web master to manage and update it. We would just need to provide some guidelines for how the threads and information is posted and organized in these subforums.

I would like to get some feedback and suggestions from other forum members. Do you think adding subforums as suggested is a good idea? Do you have other ideas about how we could provide a repository of custom macros and LISP code?
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  #2  
Old 12-19-2007, 11:40 AM
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Wolfgang Wolfgang is offline
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Re: Proposal for Macro Subforums

Now, John forced me to write what I did not want to write.. right now!
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I joined the forums of cad.de several years ago, but focused on the us/international forum at cocreateusers.org. Since about one year I am also more active in the agile cad.de forums about CoCreate software. Many times I have read and giving help on the same topics in german and english, with some weeks in between.

What I have been missing is a good tool collection for the guys at cocreateusers.org and, of course I knew about osd.cad.de. So I raised my hand as a volunteer to create English written pages about all the amazing tools only offered in German language to give support for a wider community.

This was started in September 2007 and we/I made good progress until I stopped my activities begin of November (for private reasons).

So this is not an announcement of http://osd.cad.de in English. But the pointer to the English version is: http://osd.cad.de/index.en.htm .

You can have a look to the current 'implementation' status. You will see that are still a lot of things to do. Don't complain about missing screen shots, bad links.. and so on. You will find a real life snapshot in the middle of something

There have been already a hidden hint here at cocreateusers.org in the modeling a chain thread 2 months ago. Don't know how many of you really saw it.
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From my point of view the international forum and the german one are quite different. The german one is much more agile IMHO. So many times someone raised up a problem, some others delivered input and a third one created a new tool. E.g. this happened during the EUROMOLD in Frankfurt, Germany. Within a week a new tool was born and made 'productive' and offered for all with a tiny documentation. I can not really remember such a situation here at cocreateusers.org.

And even more: when offering complete new ADD-ons the feedback is less (and I assume that much more CoCreate customers are reading English articles then german ones).
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I would also like to point to the pages Claus setup.
http://www.clausbrod.de/cgi-bin/view.pl/OneSpaceModeling/OsdmFaq

This is a Twiki and everyone is beeing able to contribute. The fact is: Most of the stuff is written by Claus himself. I guess that during the last 12 months not more than 5 people have been adding an article or an existing one enhanced. Delivering good contents is work to do. And only very few people are willing to spend their time for the other ones advantage. -- And this leads to the situation that Claus's Twiki is not a 'selfrunner'. It is far away from that.
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Compared to wikipedia we are only few readers but the percentage of people writing/answering compared to those reading might be better in our CoCreate forums. Nevertheless you will end up here with 3..5 people writing in such a Macro Subforum. Yes these are hard words but I fear that's the reality.
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So I think it does not make sense to set up "Macro Subforums".

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Matthias (webmaster of osd.cad.de) is also reading here. And if a good tool would be offered here it will also find it's way to osd.cad.de if we think it might be useful for the german guys, too. That chance does exist.

I'm looking forward to reactions of other people here. Depending on that I will continue/restart my activities on osd.cad.de*EN next year or I will stop.

One Point: I'm only thinking/talking about OneSpaceModeling + its modules. Drafting .... I'm not really active at all, and will lower this for the advantage of Annotation.

Wolfgang

Last edited by Wolfgang; 12-19-2007 at 11:47 AM. Reason: some typos, missing words
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  #3  
Old 12-19-2007, 11:56 AM
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Wolfgang Wolfgang is offline
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Re: Proposal for Macro Subforums

Quote:
Originally Posted by John Scheffel View Post
....but it has not been updated in many years.....
http://www.cocreateusers.org/macros/macro.htm
Just for your detailed info:

That page is dated from Mar 25 2003.

The 5 Zip files offered for SolidDesigner over there are:
  • 27.11.2000 22:41 3.180 drawlist.zip
  • 27.11.2000 22:27 10.861 explode_w.zip
  • 26.06.2000 09:24 30.437 machine_macs.zip
  • 28.11.2000 16:10 3.106 sd_busy.zip
  • 30.06.1999 08:01 1.635.595 td60nt.zip
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  #4  
Old 12-20-2007, 12:11 AM
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clausb clausb is offline
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Re: Proposal for Macro Subforums

Quote:
Originally Posted by John Scheffel View Post
By using subforums the code could be posted and managed by members and it would not require a web master to manage and update it. We would just need to provide some guidelines for how the threads and information is posted and organized in these subforums.

I would like to get some feedback and suggestions from other forum members. Do you think adding subforums as suggested is a good idea? Do you have other ideas about how we could provide a repository of custom macros and LISP code?
Forums are good because they invite participation, and the barrier for entry is usually low. However, they are not really made for providing consistent documentation on a particular topic, or even maintaining source code over several versions.

This won't surprise anybody, but personally I think some kind of wiki site is just perfect for this kind of purpose, particularly if the wiki site handles versioning and attachments properly. TWiki is one such wiki implementation, and I happen to like it and run it on my site, but there are of course alternatives.

While I admire the effort which went into osd.cad.de over time, and applaud the current web master's work and stamina, I never liked the fact that the web site is closed, and that users depend on the web master if they want to contribute anything, even if it's just fixing a typo. For example, if osd.cad.de was running some kind of wiki software, users could split up amongst themselves the work of translating the docs and macros into English or other languages, and we wouldn't depend on Wolfgang to do all the work for us. (Wolfgang, don't get me wrong; what you're doing there is fabulous - I just think a wiki could have made your work a lot, lot easier 8-) )

Claus
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  #5  
Old 12-20-2007, 05:39 AM
MichaelA MichaelA is offline
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Re: Proposal for Macro Subforums

So I'm one of the originators of the suggestion to John to have a location to share customizations scripts. I'm very familar with the osd.cad.de site, I have been there many times and have translated or leveraged code from this site in the past. However this is the first time I have seen a link to an english version, where has that been hiding? I have searched for that on the german home page and just haven't seen it (just checked again this moment, I must be missing the obvious) Just went to the english location, man I wish I found this months ago. Nicely done. Now it is a bookmark so I won't loose it.
Now how do we add things to the site? That is what I'm after and personally don't care where it is located as long as it is easy to use, easy to find and easy to share. The other thing that I like about using this forum or something similar is that I could post a customization and someone could load, use it, find an error (maybe just in how they use it), fix it and save it back to the original forum post with a note as to what was done. It is very common for me to find a script from someone and then to find that it was written in an older version and it no longer works in the current version (I'm running v15.50 presently). I will fix the code but don't know how to get it back out to other users. Also scripts can be reused/leverage and tweaked to match personal needs. Those variations could also be posted as who knows which variation a user might like. For example I have leverage the spring code from the german forum and tweaked to match my personal needs plus made what I think are a couple of improvements. How do I share that version back (though I'm bad, I have removed all the german language, just changed too much such that the german words didn't match anymore)
So if there is a way to do this with the german site, cool, I'm there. If not let's figure out a way to have a single location in mulitple languages (I wish I could write/read german many days, thank god for babel fish) for users to share their various scripts. I agree that having too many sites to share the same thing is not efficient or effective. I'm up for one if we can make it work.
BTW, there are still a number of people that still use Drafting over Annotation, IMHO it is still a better 2d tool though Annotation keeps getting better and closer to drafting. Just been using it for too many years (since v1, man I'm getting old) and am too efficient with it in the Classic UI with my custom menus. I normally push people to Annotation if they are new users however.

Michael
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  #6  
Old 12-20-2007, 11:57 AM
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Wolfgang Wolfgang is offline
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Re: Proposal for Macro Subforums

Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelA View Post
... osd.cad.de ... However this is the first time I have seen a link to an english version, where has that been hiding?.... just haven't seen it
Just to make it clear:

You can't see it! It's hidden by intention!

I hoped to announce it end of november / begin december. But priorities are different. But the current english contents is not good enough (too many gaps IMHO) to announce it. But this thread was worth enough to say "hey, there's already something growing".

My next "milestone" will be next year
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  #7  
Old 01-07-2008, 08:12 PM
MichaelA MichaelA is offline
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Re: Proposal for Macro Subforums

Well seems that we didn't get that many people speaking up, bummer. I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm from the rest of the crowd of people, other than the usual cast of characters.

So it looks like we could add a subforum here or have Wolfgang add a way for the rest of us to share our cool stuff easily on the german website. I'm open to either (would be nice to have all the good stuff in one place, so I like the extension to the german site but not sure how best to implement that). One thing I like a lot with the forum is that someone posts a tool with or without problems and others grab it and make improvements or variations to it. Very powerful.

Wolfgang, are you interested in adding this capability to the german site? Should we start with the subforums until Wolfgang can get the german site converted into english and add the necessary stuff to make it easier to submit/exchange code? I'm open but would like to have an easier place to share code other than just in the normal forum areas, things can get kind of buried/lost if want you are looking for isn't a current discussion.

regards,
Michael
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  #8  
Old 02-06-2008, 11:02 AM
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Wolfgang Wolfgang is offline
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Re: Proposal for Macro Subforums

Based on the fantastic feedback to the contents and idea within this thread and the overwhelming number of volunteers raising the hand , I fear I can say that a specialized macro forum here at cocreateusers.org would be a still birth. Same would be valid for another wiki based page to share those stuff.

(EDIT: don't misunderstand the sentences above. It was written a little sarcastically.. but as you can see below I will not bail out! /EDIT)

The process to handle new 'tools' developed, discussed, performed and finally published on/with http://osd.cad.de is well established and working fine for years. So I will continue the way I started and go further by adding new tools to the english branch of http://osd.cad.de. - But I will not hurry up.

If there's a tool coming up here at cocreateusers.org and Matthias / myself think(s) it might be of interest for the german speaking people, too, we will pick it up for german and english (well, if we are allowed to do so).

Cross reading (by native speakers) of announced english pages on http://osd.cad.de/index.en.htm are welcome. Also already translated tools, might decrease my effort. For this purpose I'll let you know my email address via private forum message.

Wolfgang

Last edited by Wolfgang; 02-07-2008 at 09:41 AM. Reason: add remark and one smilie
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  #9  
Old 02-07-2008, 12:10 AM
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clausb clausb is offline
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Re: Proposal for Macro Subforums

Based on the experience from a number of forums (not just CAD-related), the response we've got is actually already quite good - or at least it's what you can expect. You're usually lucky if you'll find two or three contributors.

Claus
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