Library Announcement aggregator needed IMHO

After seeing several great libraries in two days, i realize i had missed
a lot of development in Openscad realm in recent years.

I think we  pretty much  need a RSS-like aggregator on OpenScad's main
page, where once one of the "Lib-Commiter-Privilege"-listed users
release a new version of a Module, model or Collecton, it would pop up
with a picture and perhaps a short description of how to use the module.
It might be even possible to pull the Meta-information automatically,
reusing Github's commit/release messages, and agreeing on the File Names
for the title pictures..


I would be the first to subscribe to this RSS right away.

Peter

P.S: of course, the idea might be non-trivial technically, and
maintenance-wise.
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On 08.06.21 19:00, [hidden email] wrote:
> I think we  pretty much  need a RSS-like aggregator on OpenScad's main
> page, where once one of the "Lib-Commiter-Privilege"-listed users
> release a new version of a Module, model or Collecton, it would pop up
> with a picture and perhaps a short description of how to use the module.

I'm a bit worried about the need for maintaining user data to allow that.

What I just found yesterday is this post from the Arduino project which
outlines an updated process to publish libraries:
https://blog.arduino.cc/2021/06/07/new-workflow-for-arduino-library-submissions/

Maybe something along those lines would be doable with some reasonable
effort while pushing most of the hosting and maintenance part to github.
The final info file could be hosted on our file server, just as the
nightly builds are pulled automatically.

ciao,
  Torsten.
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Hello Torsten, interesting.
I think one perhaps could imply non trivial rules to comply with, to
ensure the library registration bot will not reject it. Thus demanding
minimal effort, people have to go through to share their work (this is
very cynical).  scaring off those with very minor five minutes libs or
lib changes (this is useful).

I am not sure how to agree on theese quality rules.
to be honest i do not really like this my very own idea, because it
disciplines people for wanting to share their work for free.

and actually i was thinking more of library update anouncments, say
like: "Nop Head has just released this particular great new Assembly"
rather than library anouncement,
I think we have way less lib committers than Arduino, so we could be
more friendly to everybody, since there are not so many. and if they get
too many, then let deal with t then.

Perhaps, alternativly, there could be a Voting Promotion Process, so if
somebody wants to publish an update, he anounces a link to the library
(with a nice picture and description) and then on a voting Page every
member of the Anouncement mailing list can Vote for it, or choose not to.
If it gets a minimum threshold of say (4 Votes of mailig list users) it
gets promoted to the RSS-feed on the Homepage.
I am not sure, but perhaps this will also make the "library Page" rank
higher on Google search, sine there will be more updates. And "a library
update Ticker  section" will make the openscads homepage much more
fancy. But it will also have its value for spotting new useful libs.
we could even push it ito Openscad itself, like with Cura or Visual Studio
Peter
On 08.06.21 22:55, Torsten Paul wrote:

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On 10.06.21 19:49, [hidden email] wrote:
> to be honest i do not really like this my very own idea,
> because it disciplines people for wanting to share their
> work for free.

People will always be able to just share things, we are not
Apple trying to cage people and tell them what they can do.

The point here is more that to make some kind of automation
possible (e.g. having an automatically updated list in the
application itself), there's some defined structure needed.
Software is still very dumb, so it needs either help with
lots of configuration or some defined rules and conventions.

The return for doing that effort is the more obvious listing
of the library. But there's no limitation that will make it
impossible for people to just blog post, put the model on
a Facebook page, or into the description of a YouTube video
(Hi BigClive! :-)

Seeing that the discussions about "real" package management
have not moved forward even a tiny bit, that's simply an
idea how to get moving, giving people something to work
with even if it's not the greatest solution in the world.
Maybe it will draw some attention and improve over time.

> Perhaps, alternativly, there could be a Voting Promotion
> Process, so if somebody wants to publish an update, he
> anounces a link to the library (with a nice picture and
> description) and then on a voting Page every member of
> the Anouncement mailing list can Vote for it, or choose
> not to.

I'm happy to help setting something up. But I'm very sure
it's not something I can maintain, days are simply not long
enough. I've created the library page as a compromise, it's
low effort for me to maintain but to keep it this way, it
has to be very limited.

I've seen so much cool stuff, flying by on twitter or on
reddit which would be nice to also have in some news stream
on the website. Maybe a simple link list would be enough
if we can find a couple of people who would help with
reviewing the links.

The gallery page is pretty much working like that already:
https://github.com/openscad/openscad.github.com/blob/master/inc/static-gallery.json

Having one or two such lists in a separate repository would
even automatically bring some simple form of user management
and approval flow, although tied to a github login. With
the built-in editor, there's not even any need to store
files locally.

ciao,
  Torsten.
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Hello Torsten
I agree this is a very good idea.

Besides, this was the first time i had a look at the Gallery after you
had mentioned it, call me dumb, i've never noticed it before.

I personally would prefer something more fancy catchy like a ticker on 
openscad's homepage,or an Update Notification on a main screen, but that
is a matter of taste.

The mechanism with the JSON file is pretty good and i agree we should
just use it for the library announcement/list as well, IMHO.

Or perhaps even RSS would be more straightforward?

Asking a library submitter to have a Github account is IMHO completely
feasible. I understand it is a commercial entity, but i think this is a
compromise everybody can agree on for now.

So how do we get things pushed to the JSON files?

Every User asking for it on this list will get commit rights to this
JSON news repo?

or should there be a pull robot,you have mentioned?

So do you think it is possible to borrow arduino's robot-script somehow?

Peter

> ciao,
>    Torsten.
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On 12.06.21 22:58, [hidden email] wrote:
> So how do we get things pushed to the JSON files?
>
> Every User asking for it on this list will get commit rights
> to this JSON news repo?

No, just a normal github account should be enough to be able
to edit a file simply by pressing the edit button on the
github web page which will automatically create a pull request
on save.

For people who are really not comfortable editing the files,
creating an issue with the needed information might work too
if someone would pick that up and convert into the proper
format.

We can try this with a simple, not official linked page to see
if that works.

> or should there be a pull robot,you have mentioned?
> So do you think it is possible to borrow arduino's robot-script
> somehow?

That would be needed only for the full integration. To me it
seems it might be useful to have both the info page and then
hopefully at some point some kind of simple library management.

ciao,
  Torsten.
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Right, so who would be interested to see if that works?

I've created a repository which currently has 2 lists for testing
if maintaining those can work via github. I've also sent out an
invitation to you Peter, in case you'd like to join the experiment.

https://github.com/openscad/openscad-lists

Both lists are just dumped into the https://openscad.org/lists.html
page, which is not linked anywhere at this point. There's no
formatting or anything, just loading the data from the OpenSCAD
file server (updated every hour from github).

Editing for example the gallery list would be simply done by
opening the editor for:
https://github.com/openscad/openscad-lists/edit/main/data/gallery.yaml

I've created a PR adding the BabyCube 3D Printer
https://github.com/openscad/openscad-lists/pull/10

This now would need someone to review and approve (currently only
one approval needed). That should unlock the merge button.

Once merged, it will update the release data and the website
should update automatically about 5 minutes after the full hour.

ciao,
  Torsten.
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Torsten i think this just great, you already did it, i was thinking
about trying to help with it, but barely had any time for even
answering.
Count me in, i will do test! Just, too very busy now. Most of my spare
time today eaten up by writing of the fist tutorial for the constructive
lib. i will try to find time for it on some of coming days thgis week.
I really do think this is very important,

i hope somebody else will join us too. Nophead? Dave? anybody else?
Peter

On 13.06.2021 22:26, Torsten Paul wrote: _______________________________________________
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Hi Torsten,
i have made a review of your PR, merge and Commit, but how to kick off
the jsonp generation so the html page gets updated?
Peter
On 14.06.21 00:05, pproj wrote:
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Torsten
  i tried to add news about my lib to the news.yaml but i really do not
like twitter, it is in fact, the first time i would use it at all.
is there any less compromized open relative out there, you know of? i
would put the news about my lib there then.

On 14.06.21 20:17, [hidden email] wrote:
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On 14.06.21 20:17, [hidden email] wrote:
> i have made a review of your PR, merge and Commit, but how
> to kick off the jsonp generation so the html page gets
> updated?

In theory that should update automatically after the merge,
but it seems to have a problem with updating the file in the
release:

https://github.com/openscad/openscad-lists/runs/2822568395

There's an error in the "Release JSON" step.

So if that would have worked, the release should update with
the new data at:

https://github.com/openscad/openscad-lists/releases/tag/continous

And the file server should pick it up every hour automatically

http://files.openscad.org/lists/gallery.jsonp

For now I'll delete the release and run that action again
manually, so the web page should update at about 18:05 UTC.

ciao,
  Torsten.
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ok i understand, will there be a place, where i can see  that i have
made a syntax Error in Yaml and it is not published?

On 14.06.21 20:27, Torsten Paul wrote:

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On 14.06.21 20:25, [hidden email] wrote:
> i tried to add news about my lib to the news.yaml but i
> really do not like twitter, it is in fact, the first time
> i would use it at all.
> is there any less compromized open relative out there,
> you know of? i would put the news about my lib there then.

We just need to define what data is required and how it
should be displayed. Twitter and Thingiverse are just two
of the places where people tend to put their OpenSCAD
designs. Other than that, reddit comes to mind and we
probably also want to support just generic URLs.

In the end it should be relatively easy to add some other
places if a generic URL is not enough. The main benefit
for knowing specific services is that this will reduce the
needed input, e.g. for Thingiverse it should be enough to
just declare the thing-id.

ciao,
  Torsten.
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On 14.06.21 20:55, [hidden email] wrote:
> ok i understand, will there be a place, where i can see
> that i have made a syntax Error in Yaml and it is not
> published?

Not yet, right now there's only the converter running when
the change is approved and activated.

But it's easy to also add a validation that runs at the
time the PR is created. This could check both format of
the file and also if things like URLs actually exist.

The result would show up as "Check" in the PR and when
failed require to be fixed before it the PR can be
merged.

ciao,
  Torsten.
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On 14.06.21 21:58, Torsten Paul wrote:
> [....]designs. Other than that, reddit comes to mind and we
> probably also want to support just generic URLs.
>
> In the end it should be relatively easy to add some other
> places if a generic URL is not enough. The main benefit
> for knowing specific services is that this will reduce the
> needed input, e.g. for Thingiverse it should be enough to
> just declare the thing-id.

Ok i understand, i just wonder if there is a micro-news service or site
out there,  we could use for news about libraries, which is:

1. not commecially interested vendor-controlled

2. does not practice widespread political censorship of participants
(this/these ones i would prefer not to use and support its growth).

I really do not see any. Perhas Diaspora?

It looks like i will end up using Thingiverse for that.nit dues not pass
condition 1. though.


I just really wonder why there is so little attention to the
library/update-announcement mechanisms on the list.

Any ideas?

Peter

> ciao,
> Torsten.
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On 20.06.21 13:27, [hidden email] wrote:
> I really do not see any. Perhas Diaspora?

No idea, I've never used it. Mastodon? But that's also just
for posting a short message, it would not allow to fully host
the actual project.

Maybe https://www.freedombox.org/ ?

Who knows, maybe at some point we could even have a nice
https://cadhub.xyz/ module in freedom box.

Anyway, whatever you decide to use for your projects, as long
as it has a public link, we can add it. It simply would need
repeating some summary and maybe a separate image link. That's
all.

The main work remaining is to prepare all the presentation
part for the website. I'll probably start with converting the
gallery as that's the much easier part. If someone with more
CSS know-how would like to help on the news part, that would
be great.

> I just really wonder why there is so little attention to
> the library/update-announcement mechanisms on the list.

Yeah, I did hope for at least a little bit of a response, but
it's not hugely surprising. It's extra work and most people
are already busy enough. I'm ok with moving that along to a
state where it's actually integrated and useful. It might be
easier to ask people to join the review group then.

There's so much cool stuff happening, like just today I've
seen:
https://twitter.com/3dprinty/status/1406111169010671619
https://twitter.com/caterpillar/status/1406552352165752842

Also in case someone is interested in a talk about by Tam
Hanna who published a book about "Technical Modelling in
OpenSCAD" recently:
https://twitter.com/byte_adventures/status/1405590934759383040

ciao,
  Torsten.
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