Update text for planet.racket-lang.org?

['John Clements' via dev-redirect]

The text for planet.racket-lang.org is a bit misleading; in particular, it starts with the claim that "PLaneT is Racket's centralized package distribution system.” This is no longer the whole truth, and it seems to me like we might want to gently steer users toward packages, ideally without scaring anyone away entirely.

How about something like this set of edits:

DELETE: PLaneT is Racket's centralized package distribution system. Here you will find user-contributed Racket packages along with instructions for using them.

REPLACE WITH: <i>Note:</i> Racket version 6.0 introduced a new package distribution system, whose home page is <a>pkg.racket-lang.org</a>. Most recent development work uses this newer framework, and many of the packages available on this page have newer versions as part of the new system. This page contains the packages associated with Racket’s older package system, PLaneT.

AND: The Racket team is committed to a smooth transition, and the existing PLaneT infrastructure should be supported for some time to come.

The packages on this site are user-contributed and not part of Racket. Be aware that when you download one of them for use in your programs, you are installing software on your computer that could deliberately or accidentally harm your system. Do not require from PLaneT any packages you do not trust.

DELETE: For more about how to use PLaneT and for instructions on turning your own code into packages, see the PLaneT documentation (also available in your local installation).

This page shows the latest versions of all available packages, sorted by category.

DELETE: You can be notified when new packages are added by subscribing to the RSS feed or to the PLaneT-Announce mailing list.


That’s how I think I would edit it, anyhow.

Neil, I think you’re probably the one most affected by this (proposed) change….

Thoughts?

John

[Neil Van Dyke]

I wouldn't bury the lede, nor confuse people with a lot of text.

I would replace *all* of the text with 2 sentences: "This page is for
Racket's <b>old</b> package system, <a href=...>PLaneT</a>. We
encourage people to use the <a href...>new package system</a> instead."

For reasons both related and other, Trac info and links should be
removed from the PLaneT Web interface.

PLaneT should continue to work indefinitely, including accepting new
packages.

Separately, you might want to figure out how to do that such that people
navigating from search (or about to navigate from search) don't land on
any page of PLaneT documentation without realizing that it's the old thing.

Neil

[Robby Findler]

Thanks. I've gone with something more like Neil's suggestion for
updating the front page of planet, but by changing the prefix instead
of deleting the other information.

At some point in the past I did something that stopped the flow of
spam in Trac and I can't quite recall what it was anymore, but it
effectively disabled it, I believe.

Which search link are you think of, Neil?

Robby

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Racket Developers" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to racket-dev+...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to racke...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-dev/551B3268.9080605%40neilvandyke.org.
>
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Neil Van Dyke]

Robby Findler wrote on 04/03/2015 04:51 PM:
> At some point in the past I did something that stopped the flow of
> spam in Trac and I can't quite recall what it was anymore, but it
> effectively disabled it, I believe.

It's not the spam -- it's the encouraging people to communicate issues
with my packages using a bug tracking system that I don't use.

> Which search link are you think of, Neil?

Documentation search. Say, someone searches for "pkg install", for
example. Or searches for anything else that might land them into PLaneT
documentation. (There is a similar problem with SRFI documentation. I
think this has been discussed on the main email list from time to time,
over the years.)

Neil V.