#ubuntu-doc report for 2004-12-24, 25 and 26

[Enrico Zini]

Hello!

*NEW* From this issue, the IRC report has titles!


#ubuntu-doc report for 2004-12-24

* Froud proposed lots of improvements for our DocBook work

Froud had a look at the repository checkout and proposed various
improvements:
 - Using /usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/current/xhtml/chunk.xsl
   instead of /usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/xhtml/chunk.xsl
   so that future upgrades of ubuntu.xsl won't break
 - Building also PDF using Apache FOP (http://xml.apache.org/fop/)
   instead of just building HTML
 - Using DocBook 4.3: we currently have:
   <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN" 
      "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd">
   and froud would know if it's possible to do:
   <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.3//EN" 
      "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.3/docbookx.dtd">

The problem with Apache FOP is that it's not in Ubuntu at the moment,
and it seems it depends on the evil Sun JDK.

Enrico suggested falling back to whatever xmlto
(http://cyberelk.net/tim/xmlto/) uses (which is db->latex->dvi->pdflatex
), as it all works with a free toolchain.  Froud objected that using
that toolchain means losing the docbook fop extensions.

Froud complained that there is no FOP rendering engine in Ubuntu, and
mako asked him to file a wishlist bug in bugzilla assigned to mako for
that.

In the end, we decided to settle with what we have for now, and the
moment we'll be unsatisfied, we can address it.


#ubuntu-doc report for 2004-12-25

* Getting on the DocTeam

Froud has been asking various things about how the docteam works, the
relationship between the wiki and the repository, the goals of the team.

ChrisH answered in detail:

 <ChrisH> At least we need to get going on the docbook documents. And I
	  was just arguing because many people have been talking to
	  screw everything that has been worked on and do it
	  differently. Which obviously led to writers drop their pens
	  and do nothing. And that's roughly where we are currently.
 <ChrisH> Wiki is more a draft place or a place to organise. I think
          it's okay for that purpose.
 <ChrisH> All "serious" documentation will probably be done in docbook.
 <ChrisH> As most writers here have neither used DocBook/XML nor
	  Subversion before this is still straightforward. We have not
	  tags or branches yet. And the Canonical people are
	  "motivating" us to get the whole document into baz - where
	  things will be handled much more differently either.
 <ChrisH> baz = bazaar. An "arch" derivative that is developed by
          Canonical to replace all existing repository systems.
 <ChrisH> arch versus svn is really a religious question. Even worse
	  than Amiga versus Atari, Vi versus Emacs and Linux versus
	  Windows.
 <ChrisH> Canonical will give us a sandbox in the next days/weeks to
          play with it and we can decide whether we move or not.
 <ChrisH> Let's be open-minded. If it's nice, let's use it. Some aspects
          are pretty neat.


* GUI for writing DocBook

ChrisH asked if people knew a GUI for writing DocBook/XML, besides
conglomerate.

After listing various non-free possibilities, it seems that the best
free tool at the moment is Emacs+psgmls.


* froud advocated changing everything (again)

I prefer to leave out the details of yet-anoter-let's-change-everything
proposal, in virtue of http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2004-December/000736.html

It's worth however reporting some URLs extracted from the conversation:

 http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
   A book on Subversion
 http://esvn.umputun.com/
   A GUI front-end to Subversion
 http://learnlinux.tsf.org.za/project/web-project.html
   Learn Linux - Developing FLOSS GNU/Linux training materials
   

#ubuntu-doc report for 2004-12-26

* The repository is UP!

sivang was complaining about the subversion repository being down;
however, it turned out that the repository was up indeed.
As posted by John himself in http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2004-December/000796.html
his town was hit by a bad snow storm and his house had a long blackout
that exausted the UPS and so the machine never went up.  But now John's
back and the repo is alive and kicking!

About the migration to Canonical machines, Enrico had a chat with Elmo
some days ago.  Works on migrating the repository to Canonical machines
can't happen while Elmo is on vacation.  He'll be back at around the 3rd
of January and I'll get back in touch with him about it.


* New hot entries

sivang was also wondering how to handle new entries in the team that
step in and shout "let's change everything from scratch".  He'd like to
be able to tell "This is waht we decided, this is how it is _going_ to
be".

mako proposed a docteam FAQ.


* Noone reads Enrico's posts

Enrico wondered how come it seems that noone reads his posts about the
status of things, making the hipotesis that his messages are tool long.
Mako suggested this:

 <mako> (1) write the message (2) write a summary of the message (3)
        throw away everything except the summary
        (plus any essential details)

Enrico thought it's a nice idea and will try.


Ciao,

Enrico

--
GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <enrico at debian.org>
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