Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
It would be good to keep the sourceforge page uncluttered, and adding all these sections would make it much more cluttered than it already is. But I do think it's a good idea to post the binaries one a website and remove them from CVS.
i don't think that this would clutter the sourceforge page. there is already a number of external packages in the download section, most of them seem to be unmaintained. (which kind of invalidates your argument about using "wiki for stuff that does not get updated on a regular basis")
the current sections are, in order of appearance: pd-devel (outdated? - last mid 2005) pd-extended (early 2006) pd-externals (OUTDATED - early 2003) pd-gem (early 2003) pd-osc (outdated - 2002) pure-data (uptodate - end 2006)
i believe, that this page would be more useful if there were lots of uptodate packages.
however, an example for an unstructured download page with lots(!) of packages (currently over 80!), is the plone-collective (projectname: "collective") found at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55262 now this is _really_ a one-stop shop for loads of things. while the list is long, it is still managable to find what you need if you know what you are looking for. if you do not know what you are looking for, then everything with more than one package will get you lost.
i agree though, that the puredata download page could and should be structured (which it is currently not). since sourceforge orders packages alphabetically, one would just have to find a naming scheme, where: pd-vanilla is at the top, pd-extended is prominent too, pd-externals are grouped together (though distinguishable via package names!) somewhere below. pd-devel&desiredata could go next to pd-extended and pd-vanilla (if desired). i don't think that pd-devel/desiredata should go _before_ pd-vanilla and pd-extended.
so i would think of something like (annotations in ()) - pd - pd-extended - pd-external-ann - pd-external-osc - pd-external-zexy - pure-desiredata - pure-devel
a probably nicer way would be: - pure-data - pure-data-extended - pure-desiredata - pure-devel - pure-ext-ann - pure-ext-osc - pure-ext-zexy
i don't know whether it is possible to rename already release package-sections, but i guess not (like so many things on sourceforge). (but after a check i see, that it is possible to "hide" packages, so one could eventually fake a renaming by hiding the original one and creating a new one)
How about puredata.info for random things that won't be regularly updated? There is the download wiki exactly for things like this.
i do not agree here.
the download wiki is a place to get information. the sourceforge release system is a place to get stuff. as said before, i would prefer if large amounts of data would not be hosted at puredata.info (yet). the sourceforge release system provides a world-wide distributed, redundant, high-bandwidth download system, something we could _never_ provide on our own. so why not use it?
mfg.asdr IOhannes