GSOC 2014 Project Proposal

[Devashish Badlani]

I am into my last year of graduation and I am currently an intern in Khan Academy ,Foundation for Learning Equality from IIT Bombay .I have been developing working with Django for the same

Title: Building basic Web Frameworks for each module of Django Book for the beginners 

I have prepared sample code which uses a JSON file and converts it in to a hierarchial topic tree so that a basic developer with the knowledge of HTML,CSS can easily understand with the documentation to each of the app prepared the interactive way to code in Django

Sample Code

Git Repo:

https://github.com/deebee07

[Camilo Torres]

Hello Devashish,

If you are planning to contribute to: http://www.djangobook.com, glad to hear that. The http://www.djangobook.com project is not controlled by the Django  community, but by the book authors. Please look at the "Warning about this edition" in http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/index.html to learn how you can contribute to that project.

Please, remember this is a list for Django development.

If you are planning to contribute to a project different from http://www.djangobook.com/, please disregard this message.

Camilo.

[Daniel Greenfeld]

Time for me to delurk and cover a few things. I'm not a core developer of Django, but I honed my skills on the first edition of the Definitive Guide some years ago and am a co-author of a recently released Django-related book and it's sequel (Two Scoops of Django). 

First off, I'm not certain what Devashish was asking, but that's okay, I'm going to broach the issue of updating djangobook anyway.

As Camilo mentioned, the control of the web version of the book is in the hands of the authors. The author with the most recent exercise of control is Jacob Kaplan-Moss. Since the last pull request was accepted 9 months ago, there have been 34 pull requests submitted for updating content. At this moment, the book is a strange mix of 0.96 era and 1.4 era practices, confusing anyone new to the framework.

Now I'm not Jacob Kaplan-Moss, and I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but I completely understand why no activity has occurred on djangobook.com. As a fellow author I can tell you that managing the content on a large, heavily studied volume is an unbelievable amount of work. Pull requests are nice, but there are no tests suites for prose.

Note #1: There have also been several 'modernized' forks launched, but as far as I'm aware, none of them have been consistently maintained.

In any case, as the book is notoriously out-of-date and inconsistently updated, when I last requested to Jacob that the book needed a warning around it at the end of July, his response was to grant me commit rights. Ahem... The warning on the front of djangobook.com, reviewed by a couple of others, is my contribution. Considering how frequently the book is still recommended and the front page warning ignored, I've considered adding a warning bar at the top of every page. That's arguably controversial, and I've got enough stress in my life to not warrant any more. 

Note #2: I did consider managing the pull requests and updating djangobook.com myself, but the burden it would cause to my already heavy workload is too much. (Heck, I want open source time right now but that's my business...)

Note #3: I've considered taking djangobook.com off the wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_(web_framework)#Online_resources. However, as an author of a published Django book myself, it feels weird and arguably inappropriate. So I'm recusing myself from editing if off that document.

So where am I going with all this?

Well, I would love to see an updated djangobook.com. I'm tired of people emailing me questions asking for help with things on which djangobook.com led them astray. I'm not the person to do this work, to manage this project, but I think it should be updated and managed by someone. The project should be managed by someone in the Django community who:

1. Has a deep understanding of Django. This needs has to be proven via current and previous projects or commits available 

2. Has a demonstrable grasp of RestructuredText. 

3. Has excellent writing and reading comprehension skills. They need to have publicly available examples of writing.

4. Displays good pull request management techniques. It's easy to accept pull requests, it's hard to reject them without hurting people.

5. Should have written technical tutorials available online in HTML format.

6. Can convince Jacob Kaplan-Moss to grant them commit rights.

This _could_ be a GSOC project, or it could be the work of an interested party. It would be nice to see it happen, just as it would be nice to see djangobook.com taken off the wikipedia page until it does get updated.

In the meantime, unless no core developer objects, after getting yet another emailed question about mod_apache deployment (thanks to http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/chapter12.html); on Monday I'll be adding a top-of-the-page warning at djangobook.com.

Regards,

Daniel Greenfeld

pyd...@gmail.com

[Devashish Badlani]

I have been an Ex technical editor at Brogels,I have reviewed many articles and was a blogger an year before since then I have got myself in to using Django .I feel by making more interactive Web apps and adding them up for a user can help adding more Django coders 

TheDjangoBook has 20 modules with 16 weeks of GSOC 2014, I can develop 4 sampleprojects for every 3 Weeks in my time at GSOC and can be furthur added to the DjangoBook

[Florian Apolloner]

To me the Djangobook is basically (sadly) a dead resource, developing sample projects against the content/topics of Djangobook is not really a GSOC project imo.

[Devashish Badlani]

 

Sir

Every beginner I feel first starts with TheDjangoBook itself,he may switch to some other source later.I feel keeping the book updated is an important aspect to promote coding in Django which is a very well defined Web Framework.The way codes are sorted as an MVC pattern in Django .

Django Developers will get the much needed push

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[Florian Apolloner]

Hi,

On Saturday, February 22, 2014 5:47:00 PM UTC+1, Devashish Badlani wrote:

Every beginner I feel first starts with TheDjangoBook itself,he may switch to some other source later.

Every beginner I see in #django starts with the tutorial as they should.
 

I feel keeping the book updated is an important aspect to promote coding in Django which is a very well defined Web Framework.

That might be, but then again it would be more important to keep the book updated and accurate than writing sample projects for it.

Cheers,
Florian

[Devashish Badlani]

Sir,


Sample projects with the updated Django 1.6.2,use of latest modules in each of them and an helpful documentaion ,would certainly enhance the value of DjangoBook is what I feel

Regards,
Devashish Badlani

[Josh Smeaton]

Would increasing the scope of the django tutorial itself and deprecating the djangobook solve the issue of new users learning django?

- The tutorial does a really great job of introducing the basics.

- Online resources for learning django have improved, significantly, since 0.96. Although it can be difficult to find an up-to-date and correct reference.

- 2 scoops of django handles the more difficult/advanced concepts really well.

- Without someone managing the djangobook alongside django itself, there are going to be times where the book will contain out of date material.

Problems:

- Maintaining an increased scope of the django tutorial would be difficult. As Daniel mentioned, there are no tests for prose. I've heard other core devs speaking about the complexities of keeping the tutorial current.

- Identifying areas for increased scope would have to be done really carefully. What do users have trouble understanding? If it's something like deployment, which methods would be "blessed", and is that appropriate for a "learn django" tutorial or is that more appropriate for an operations guide of some sort?

It's impossible to cover everything in a tutorial/book format without investing significant time and resources as Daniel Greenfield mentioned. This is the domain of authors and publishers traditionally, and 2-scoops is currently filling that role. I don't see how a GSoC project would fix the situation. Even if the participant was able to bring the djangobook into line with 1.6 or 1.7, who would take over and keep it current after that? 

Cheers

Josh

[Tim Graham]

As someone who has worked on Django's docs a lot, I've considered pitching in to help update the Django Book. However, I'm not sure it's really the best use of time as there's a lot of overlap between Django's docs and the book. Unless someone wants to argue otherwise, I suggest we adapt any portions of the book that are suitable for the official docs and incorporate them.

Regarding the possibility of doing this as a GSoC project, I can't find a reference at the moment, but my recollection is that projects need to involve mostly code, not documentation, so unless that's incorrect I don't think this would be a suitable project for that.

[Russell Keith-Magee]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 9:28 AM, Tim Graham <timog...@gmail.com> wrote:

As someone who has worked on Django's docs a lot, I've considered pitching in to help update the Django Book. However, I'm not sure it's really the best use of time as there's a lot of overlap between Django's docs and the book. Unless someone wants to argue otherwise, I suggest we adapt any portions of the book that are suitable for the official docs and incorporate them.

Regarding the possibility of doing this as a GSoC project, I can't find a reference at the moment, but my recollection is that projects need to involve mostly code, not documentation, so unless that's incorrect I don't think this would be a suitable project for that.

I can't find any reference to this either, but I definitely remember that in the past, they've been strict about the fact that SoC projects must be primarily code related. 

Yours,

Russ Magee %-)

[Devashish Badlani]

Preparing a sample project to each module of the DjangoBook is what is coding,and adding to that documentation using ReST (reStructuredText) , and the Sphinx cant that be a GSOC Project .It has code in it ,by all means

Regards,
Devashish Badlani

[Tom Evans]

On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 5:31 PM, Devashish Badlani <deebe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sir,
>
>
> Sample projects with the updated Django 1.6.2,use of latest modules in each
> of them and an helpful documentaion ,would certainly enhance the value of
> DjangoBook is what I feel
>

How would this work? The book currently admonishes readers that:

"""
The community edition of The Django Book is in transition. While the
book mentions Django version 1.4 in places, the vast majority of the
book is for Django version 1.0
"""

So you will write sample projects aimed at 1.6.2 for each chapter in a
book written for 1.0? This does not seem wise.

Cheers

Tom

[Daniel Greenfeld]

After due consideration, I think updating djangobook.com should not be a GSOC project. Why not?

First, the book is owned by the authors and Apress, not the Django project. The Django community has no control. This probably runs afoul of some sort of GSOC rule.

Second, it's representative of something that is at least partly a commercial effort. In theory, Apress could take the revised content and publish it as a third edition. While I'm not opposed to the commercial selling of books at all, I think Google would take significant exception to GSOC funds being used this way.

Third, I think providing example projects for the tutorial chapters is not worthy of a GSOC project. It's too much of a low-hanging fruit and people have certainly done it already. I know because people try to do this with Two Scoops of Django's chapters (search GitHub and you'll find some attempts).

Fourth, because of the third issue, we risk complaints of plagiarism. The content already exists, it's just a matter of finding it. GSOC funding for code examples that already exist? No. No. No. Bad idea!

Daniel Greenfeld 

[Devashish Badlani]

Thank you for your time 

Regards 

Devashish Badlani

Sent from my iPhone 5

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[Daniel Greenfeld]

One more note in this thread:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Definitive-Guide-Django-Development/dp/1430258810

The Definitive Guide to Django is being revised. Apress has added Katie Cunningham to the author list, something that now I just remembered Jacob Kaplan-Moss mentioned to me in early 2013. I can only guess that djangobook.com will be updated as well.

I apologize for not considering the ownership issues in my first email in this discussion.

Daniel Greenfeld