status of changing documents for gutsy

[Jonathan Jesse]

On Thursday 14 June 2007 17:21:55 Matthew East wrote:
> Hi Duncan/Jonathan,
>
> * Duncan Lithgow:
> > On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 21:44 -0400, Jonathan Jesse wrote:
> >> Now that Tribe1 has been out for a bit, has then been any updating going
> >> on the documents yet?
> >
> > Thanks for raising this Jonathan.
> >
> > I would like to join this question. I often have ideas and want to make
> > small contributions, but I can't really find out what the status of
> > anything is...
> >
> > Several times I've seen good ideas dissolve into "we haven't decided
> > what direction the docs are taking..."
>
> You're right, but I don't think we can use that excuse any more. Over
> the course of the last release cycle, we did decide the direction, and
> implemented it.
>
> > I was wondering if we could use the wiki better, maybe have a list of
> > shortterm/ midterm and longterm goals? Please put me right if I just
> > haven't found the relevant pages.
>
> Again, you are quite right. The current
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/Tasks page is very poor and
> such a list would be a good idea. I've got some ideas in mind for the
> basic direction I'd like things to go in, and I've articulated them a
> couple of times in various discussions with others, but as a team we
> haven't produced anything for the wiki, and we should. We should do so
> after the meeting that Rich is organising.
>
> >> Are we still moving forward with the topic based help structure?
> >
> > Personally I don't think topic based works well, but that doesn't mean
> > much. What I think it does mean is that there should be a choice.
> > There's no special reason why both structures can't be available. It's
> > content navigation, not content in itself.
>
> I think people are getting a little bit confused about this "topic basic
> help" concept - it's not so much a structure as simply a way of writing
> helpful documentation. Re-reading the original spec will probably make
> things clearer - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TopicBasedHelp
>
> At least from the Ubuntu side, the best way to rationalise what happened
> with the structure over the last release was that the various sections
> in the "Desktop Guide" were changed slightly to make them more
> user-friendly, and moved up a level so that the user sees them as soon
> as opening the Desktop Help System [1], rather than burying them one
> link down. Other documentation from Gnome and the Server Guide was
> integrated with that. I don't really see this as a question of "choices"
> about how to present documentation, I simply see it as an improvement.
>
> [1] Compare https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/ with
> https://help.ubuntu.com/6.06/ubuntu/desktopguide/C/index.html
>
> That said, I'd be interested in what alternative structure you feel we
> should be presenting, and how.
>
> > It's so disappointing to see doc pages which are out of
> > date and know that they are confusing new users, the opposite of what's
> > intended.
> >
> > For both these points I think we need a wiki with a permissions system
> > we can use so that we can protect important documents from changes by
> > 'outsiders'. I don't know if moin-moin can do this but I know other
> > wikis can. (I'm offline as I write, otherwise I'd lookup wikipedia's
> > comparison table for wiki systems.)
>
> See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpWikiQualityAssurance, the spec which is
> rapidly approaching the record for specs which have been around the
> longest time without finding the right person to do the work on them.
>
> Matt

Currently my goals for Kubuntu are focused a little more upstream, working on 
documentation for Keep, Speedcrunch (as it is now using Kubuntu's release 
schedule) and Adept.  Since Adept for KDE and Kubuntu now differs from KDE's 
version I think we need to release documentation specific to Kubuntu for 
Gutsy and I am working on that.