Thought I'd let you know a little about what's happening with Ringlink.
New copies of the program are downloaded every day, and more than 1,000
copies of version 1.2, which was released at 14 April, have been
downloaded. It's impossible to tell exactly how many Ringlink systems
have been actually installed and running, but personally I believe it's
a few hundred. In any case, there are a lot more working systems than
have been registered in the Ringlink systems directory, maintained by
Pete H. If you run a system, not yet registered in the directory
(http://www.ringlink.org/directory/), it's not to late...
In spite of all the downloads, the volume of submitted support requests
is very low, and I keep wondering why. Of course, one logical and
probable explanation is that the Ringlink FAQ, written and maintained by
Rachelle, now covers the most important aspects of installing and
customizing the program. Btw, Ringlink got flattering attention through
a newsletter in Network World
(http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/web/2001/00768488.html), and the
author emphasized that Ringlink is well documented.
Nevertheless, the requests for help we get indicate that the
documentation can be even more complete. Accordingly, we have started
the creation of a Ringlink tutorial. Peggy, one of the newest
developers, will lead the work with it, and the tutorial and the FAQ
will supplement each other. Even if it's far from finished, you are
already invited to study the tutorial (http://www.ringlink.org/docs/).
If you have any ideas about what should be covered by the tutorial, the
FAQ, or by the website on the whole, please post them here.
Right now we are 9 Ringlink developers, with various roles. You can see
who we are at http://sf.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=15568
As regards the actual program, I started the work with "cleaning up" the
code a few weeks ago, making the code valid in a couple of respects. It
has taken longer time to complete it than I first anticipated, but I
will probably have it done very soon now. As a result of this, the
development copy of the code has been a mess, and basically it has been
impossible for other developers to contribute with program changes.
The "cleaning up" procedure includes a lot of minor changes without
actually adding any new features. So, what's the point then? One very
useful thing is that the cleaner code will make it possible to prepare
Ringlink to run under something called mod_perl. This will make it
possible to significantly decrease the load on the server caused by
Ringlink.
When this is done, it's time to actually start the work with the
translation feature, which has already been discussed here.
End for now.
/ Gunnar