Transition to Mallard?

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 9:18 PM, Kyle Nitzsche
<kyle.nitzsche at canonical.com> wrote:
>  * simpler syntax: docbook isn't that hard for writers. If you can't
> deal with it, should you really be writing docs?

Quite aside from the merits of this discussion, which is definitely
interesting, this isn't an attitude that I want to see projected by
the documentation team to potential contributors and for that reason I
feel compelled to reply to it.

I agree that docbook isn't impossible to get to learn and can be
picked up with a certain amount of practice, but anyone who has worked
with a volunteer group like this one for any extended period knows
that it does get in the way, and it is a barrier to entry. We welcome
contributions from any member of the community, whether they feel
comfortable with docbook or not. That's one of the reasons why we
welcome contributions in plain text, or via wiki markup. It's
absolutely not true that anyone who isn't comfortable with dealing
with docbook isn't welcome in this team or is unable to contribute to
our documentation.

I think the next stage for this discussion is probably to simply try a
migration to Mallard and see how it goes: there are no strings
attached to such a testing branch, and it would enable us to
understand better the issues.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF