RFC: TopicBasedHelp specification

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Nov 10, 2006, at 1:54 PM, Richard Johnson wrote:
>
> On Friday 10 November 2006 14:53, Jonathan Jesse wrote:
>>>
>>> Then please do whatever you can to get KDE using a topic-based help
>>> system sometime in the next six months as well. It's a better 
>>> approach regardless of the environment you're using.
>>
>> Wow what a comment.  Please turn the ship of KDE documentation.  How 
>> do you think they will react to this suggestion by someone who 
>> doesn't
>> contribute any documentation upstream (yet)?  This is not a very 
>> serious approach to take.
> ...
> I have to agree with Jonathan here, especially in 6 months, when I 
> know a lot of their focus is on KDE 4 currently.

First, don't panic. :-) Project Mallard might still not be ready in 
another six months. Meanwhile, the sort of structure we propose for 
Ubuntu Help while it still uses DocBook will work just as well for 
Kubuntu Help while it uses DocBook.

But once Project Mallard is ready, what do you suggest we do? Hold back 
the improvement of the Ubuntu help so as to keep its structure the same 
as the Kubuntu help?

> Also, I noticed a comment about making it easier from a multiple 
> license standpoint, didn't the Documentation Project recently switch 
> to a single license, CC-by-SA 2.5?

Yes, but the Gnome Documentation Project uses the GNU FDL as its single 
license. As long as (for example) the Gnome User Guide and the Ubuntu 
Desktop Guide have chapter-length files under incompatible licenses, it 
will be legally impractical to merge them. But when these chapters are 
split up into single help pages on specific topics, it will be much 
more practical to assemble a coherent help system consisting of FDL 
pages and CC-BY-SA pages linking to each other. (It still will not be 
practical to merge, or move text from, a page under one license into a 
page under the other license, unless you wrote all the source text 
yourself.)

Cheers
-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/