Fossil Forum
Post: [Off-Topic] Yet another Fossil Reference
So I made this simple guide or reference about GIT for laymen (or at least tried to) and now I want to attempt one for Fossil. So I would like you all to read & judge my guide & tell me if I did a competent enough job.
On a seperate note, remember when I was talking about not being able to access Chisel ? Well the problem solved itself.
On another seperate note I would like to know how THIS website was hosted via Fossil. I Wish to know the sorcery behind it (I know that the person to whom this site belongs to, is here in this forum), maybe I'll even write a guide for it myself, once I learn it.
The contents of the guide seems good, but I don't think the font style is ideal. It might be that part of your goals were to use many different styles, but it is difficult to understand the meaning behind each styling choice. For example, GitHub and GitLab use a different shade of blue than other services, and I could infer that the lighter shade means a non-for-profit service, however BitBucket is also in the lighter shade so I have no idea why the shades are different.
Indeed Chisel is back online.
I didn't look very deep into that website, but it looks like custom modifications to Fossil, including a custom skin. If you want to talk about the makers of the site, I'd advise to contact them directly, so you might want to check https://thelocalyarn.com/backmatter/about .
The different shades of blue is an unintended consequence of coding. Those are 'clicked links' no special meaning behind them at all. I was looking for judgements on the content itself (although I will take some styling advice too). BTW there are more stuff, look below you will see a table with more related info.
The shades of blue was just an example, my point is that having so many different styles can be pretty but it can also make understanding the meaning behind the colors difficult, however I can tell you took great care of the styling details.
Regarding content I'd say:
* Instead of saying Git a way to save files and directories, I'd say it is a way to keep track of changes in your files. One reason is because saving files it a filesystem's job, but adding changesets is the value added by Git. I'd also remove directories because Git (as far as I remember) does not track empty directories. Directories are only relevant if Git is a file inside one is marked for tracking.
* I love how you emphasized that it can be used beyond coding, as I use it to share my configurations on multiple systems.
* I would add the definition of what a repository is, because in the context of Git it has a specific meaning.
* Also think you should mention that you can use Git without using a dedicated host, because usually in the context of Git, hosting means focusing a system on serving as an interface to Git repositories.
* I love that the second page is about terminology, it's very useful.
* On the third page I would place git fetch and merge before git pull, then say git pull is a sequence of fetch and merge.
* Love your choices of authenticators on the last page.
* I'd add a congratulations note at the end of the last page to make the reader feel good about themselves for finishing the course :)
Well, I don't mind being the first/only person to bluntly say I don't think you have a very good reference "for laymen". It reads to me (when I look past the excessive styling choices already noted by others) like every other technical intro to git. If your target audience really is non-technical people, know that it's not about learning the tool for them--they just want to use tools to do something. There is nothing on your page that jumps out at me as a HOW TO that anybody can sink their teeth into.
When it comes to Fossil, your challenge "for laymen" is even greater, because it provides so many more features than git alone does. Similar to the site you reference, I host my own blog with Fossil. Not only are there many ways Fossil can be used to do things like that, I'm not sure any of them are as simple as a non-technical person would like them to be.
Of course, the flip side of all of this is that anyone who puts in the effort to make a technology more understandable to the masses is just going to have their work gobbled up by LLMs. I haven't checked, but I would wager that all the coding bots already do quite well with git usage, but probably fail spectacularly when it comes to doing the same tasks with Fossil. Anything you do to bridge the gap in their training data is great news for them! For better or worse, keep that in mind as you proceed.