[PGCanada] A bit of everything....

Andrew Sly sly at victoria.tc.ca
Tue Nov 9 22:23:24 PST 2004



On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, James Linden wrote:

> Regarding backend: I'm very opposed to basing PG Canada on the current PG
> system, which does not meet even minimal requirements for cataloging and
> does not rely on a master XML document.

This is the issue that draws my attention the most.
Actually, I believe it's a brief summation of three areas:
1)cataloging information
2)file format
3)directory structure
All of these are proposed by James to be done differently from
what has been done at PG. This is a valid choice, however, it
could be quite an uphill struggle to work out enough bugs
to have them at a usable point.


> If my ideas are too much for the PG Canada group that is coming together
> here, I'll step aside and not get in the way. I'd rather learn the
> appropriate lessons from PG's experiences, and do something better, which, I
> must point out, it not hard.

This is somewhere I am unsure where to draw the dividing line.
At one extreme, we could just barge ahead and start posting
whatever files people want to submit, working things out as
we go. At the other extreme we could try to work out a
detailed plan for how to deal with various exceptions that
will come up in the areas mentioned above before going
any further.

The first option has the benefit of drawing in volunteers.
PG's growth can be attributed to its historical openness
to accepting files prepared in different ways. A drawback
is that it leads to many inconsistencies in the files.
The second option has the benefit of being very organized,
which can end up making the collection easier to use, search,
etc. The drawback is that working out the details, without
basing them on an already working model, would be very
time consuming.

So is there some middle ground?

Andrew




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