Hi Friends!
Briefly: E-Maxx in English project is now semi-automated so it would be far easier (I hope) to contribute.
Updated web-site is http://e-maxx-eng.appspot.com. It grabs source texts from github and converts them from markdown. So now if you want to add an article, you can do this just in your browser, in github's interface. No more need to kick with local PHP installation etc.
You can read details in Contributors Manual or watch this demo video.
In details:
I've started E-Maxx-Eng project two years ago, as described in this post.
- the first part of idea was that people would be able to add or update texts via GitHub fork / pull-request functionality;
- the second part was to convert markdown article sources into html with PHP script on local computer and then upload result to github pages.
The second part was total crap, as it appeared. I myself felt it is difficult to update the site in such manner so the site soon become forsaken as I got more involved in my personal projects. I'm sorry for this.
I_love_Hoang_Yen provided much help with reviewing and merging recent pull-requests, however I'm afraid it seemed far from comfortable for him either. Thanks a lot to him!
Recently Nickolas wrote to me with the question whether anything could be improved. As I admire and love her greatly, I felt quite ashamed that the project is neglected. So big thanks too! And thanks to everyone who tried to contribute, to help or simply wrote some kind words.
So I composed my brain and tried to make appengine project which can:
- automatically grab new pages from github project as they are merged;
- provide live preview for the text you are going to add;
- and render all these page, so becoming a new e-maxx-eng site.
It seems to work now. Though perhaps you will be able to point some bugs or suggest improvements. Please sorry again for it take that long, but honestly speaking 2 years ago I have no clear idea of how this could be done. We all learn new things by and by.
P.S. I hope we'll be able to add few more "admins" to the github e-maxx-eng organization by and by who have the power to accept pull-requests and also to provide technical advice to contributors (e.g. with github, markdown etc).
That's great news! It would be a shame to let such a useful project wither and die.
I am willing to join e-maxx-eng organization as a maintainer (which is why I started this discussion at all :-)). I've learned a lot about technical and social aspects of managing open source communities over the past year, so this topic is not completely new for me. But I plan to do at least one contribution first to ensure I'm familiar with the contribution process for this specific project and can be helpful when questions arise.