[General] Draft of Vision Document is Live

[Mimi Yin]

http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/Vision
Thanks for the detailed feedback Davor. I've incorporated a number of  
your suggestions...See in-line.

On Jul 25, 2007, at 12:25 AM, Davor Cubranic wrote:

> I think having an intro paragraph that lays out the vision at a very
> high level would be even more useful to get people to read it. Kind of
> like an abstract for a paper. (Which is all that most people actually
> read in a typical academic paper. :-)

Basic, yet brilliant. I've added an intro that pretty much starts out  
the way you suggested.

> Next, in the body of paper, I was somewhat disoriented by "context
> switches" between problems with the data flow, the lack of support for
> iterative information processing, and multi-faceted organization of
> information.

Yes, I can see now that the structure was a bit uneven, especially  
because I formatted the 'Problem Definition' paragraphs incorrectly.  
See more below...

> Since there are multiple points, they should be enumerated
> right from the beginning, and be easily visible in the structure of  
> the
> document. E.g.:
>
> Who - the user
> - the first half and the last two paragraphs of the current "preview
> target users" section (leave their problems for the next section)

Looking at the target users section again, I see where you're coming  
from about keeping it clean and free of their workflow issues. But, I  
think the workflows are actually really handy for helping to  
concretize the target users...sort of these are the symptoms of our  
target user. If you suffer from them, you're probably a target user.  
I think just the titles 'Project Manager' for example doesn't quite  
capture the target user. It's simultaneously too broad and too narrow.

> What - the problem
> - methodology (what's in the current "Design approach" section?)
> - pull together all problems, organized in say three main areas
>   1.
>   2.
>   3.
>
> How - the Chandler solution
> - hit every point from the previous secton and show how Chandler
> fixes/will fix what's wrong with present tools
>   1.
>   2.
>   3.
>
> (This is just an example, the most important thing is to have a strong
> structure that makes it easy to grasp the crucial points.)

Yup, agree.
I've re-formatted the 'Diagnosis' section

I think the issues are gnarly enough that the 'solutions' don't line  
up so very neatly with the 'problems', at least for the information  
management bit. I've separated out the 'Collaboration' stuff into a  
more clearly defined set of sections. The Collaboration discussion  
does seem to fall out neatly the way you propose above.

> Another advantage of this organization is that Who-What-How  
> sections can
> each go on a separate page. (While it would make sense to have them
> together in a downloadable PDF version linked somewhere visible  
> here, I
> believe that it's nicer to read web pages in smaller, more
> self-contained and easily digestible chunks.)

I'd like to keep the entire document on one page, even on the wiki. I  
think there is something useful about being able to at-a-glance,  
scroll down the entire document and do a high-level reading of the  
document...as well as easily scroll up and down and essentially read  
in circles. For all-text documents I agree, it's better to paginate,  
but when there are visual anchors, I find it useful to allow people  
to read and re-read out of order.

> Also, I think it's great to have a few "reality checks" and note,  
> as you
> do now, where Chandler is in the Preview wrt. the vision, vs. what's
> planned Post-Preview (but pre-1.0?), vs. longer-term horizon
> (asymptotically approaching the vision's goal :-). It would probably
> make sense to keep these piecemeal in the How section as a relevant
> feature comes up. (Maybe pulled out into sidebars?)

Yes. I'm hoping that the links to areas and screenshots in the Get  
Started Guide will serve this function. I do want to be careful about  
not distracting from the main flow of the document with too many  
caveats so the sidebar idea sounds ideal...not sure how far I'll get  
with wiki formatting though.

> Also, there would need to be a conclusion -- what's currently
> in "Chandler as a system" would probably work fine for that.

I've added a link to the current Features list in the 'abstract' at  
the top, so hopefully that will help as well.

>
>> Our other alternative is to go with something list this:
>> http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/NutshellCartoons
>> Less concrete and less explicit, more a series of teasers that you  
>> can
>> dig into more if you want to.
>
> These are cool and contain a wealth of information, but it's much  
> harder
> for an outsider to pull them into a coherent vision on first read when
> they're organized like that. Not that they don't have a place in the
> wiki, and at least some of them them could be linked to from the  
> Vision
> page as further reading. (Either at strategic points in the text, or
> collectively at the end.)
>
> I hope this is helpful,

Extremely helpful! Thanks Davor.

>
> Davor