[darcs-users] darcs patch: Refactor Darcs homepage. (and one more).

Guillaume Hoffmann guillaumh at gmail.com
Sat Apr 11 11:43:05 UTC 2009


Hi Trent,

I've applied the homepage patch, and I'm looking at the index.html.in
because I don't know how to turn it into the index.html file.

My (plain text) review:

> Users have full power over their local repositories even
      when offline, and can exchange contributions directly, without
      the need for a central server.

I like it!

>Innovative
>    Darcs was one of the first implementations of distributed
          version control.  Unlike younger projects, Darcs' design is
          grounded solidly in "patch theory", and continues to
          improve as our understanding grows.  This has concrete benefits
          for users in terms of exceptional flexibility when manipulating
          patches.

First, I'm not sure how long the "innovative" adjective will hold, or
whether it still holds today, because as you say later, it was started
in 2002. Also, I'm always reluctant to mention patch theory to users,
and personally never do it. I prefer to mention "patch freedom". Also
your paragraph sound very insecure : "and continues to improve as our
understanding grows"    Sounds like a lot of handwaving here.

>Easy to use
>    Darcs is interactive, and it will ask you questions instead
          of making assumptions about what you want to do.  This makes it
          easy to choose which changes you want to record, or which
          updates you want to download.  Darcs is based on mathematical
          theory, but you don't need to understand it to get started!

I like this item, but the last sentence sounds useless.

I think these last 2 paragraphs can be rearranged as following (I
incorporate some changes from my homepage proposal):

*******************

Darcs is a free, distributed version control system with an
    emphasis on interactivity and ease of use.

[...]

Interactive

    Darcs is interactive, and it will ask you questions instead
          of making assumptions about what you want to do.  This makes it
          easy to choose which changes you want to record, or which
          updates you want to download.

Easy to use

Darcs only requires to learn a simple set of commands and takes care
of the details by itself.

************

About the sentence:

"We think that Darcs has things
    to offer that younger rivals like git and hg still can't
    match."

I don't like it: "we think that" sounds unsure. Calling git and hg (by
the way it's Mercurial) "younger" is absolutely true, but the fact is
that in general they are perceived as more mature than darcs. I think
this sentence is not necessary at all.

I like the "User Resources" and "Developer Resources" sections, it is
very clear.

guillaume


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