[cgmopen-members] resources/products on web site

[Lofton Henderson <lofton@rockynet.com>]

Hi,

Bruce Garner has agreed to help collect and organize the 
information.  Thanks Bruce!

We have had some preliminary discussion about structure and layout, and 
will come back later with more details. One comment we got raises a 
preliminary issue.  Should product information be "generic" or "specific"?

Generic:
------
Company XYZ:
     WebCGM plugin,
     CGM filters,
     etc.
Company ABC
     CGM generator toolkit
     CGM printer driver


Specific:
------
Company XYZ
    ViewItGood (TM) -- WebCGM plugin viewer
    ConvertEverything (TM) -- bi-directional filters between CGM and DXF, 
PDF, ...
Company ABC
     etc...

The argument against "specific" was:  too hard to maintain.

We're thinking of a "hybrid", along these lines:  first page is more 
"generic"; it points off to per-vendor, more specific pages, which point 
off to the real detailed information on vendor web site.  So something like:

cgmopen.org/Resources points to ../Resources/CGMproducts/, which contains:

-- A tabular or bullet style organized by product type/classification;
-- and a tabular or bullet style organized by company/vendor.

These are generic and point off to vendor-specific pages which can contain 
product names, classification, brief description (one sentence max?), and 
hyperlinks to vendor Web sites.  Furthermore,

1.) it would make sense to make the vendor-specific pages the 
responsibility of the vendors to keep up to date, and we'd have something 
like quarterly update opportunities (this controls the maintenance load 
somewhat);

2.) we would enforce "good taste, non-compete" presentation rules for those 
pages.  I think we should avoid any vendor-against-vendor marketing, or too 
much product detail.  In fact, we might design and agree on a common 
template for those pages.

What do you think about this issue, and the conceptual design/organization?

Regards,
-Lofton.