Re: Proposal of documentation freeze

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2004-01-06 at 09:03, Germán Poó Caamaño wrote:
> Is there the possibility to have a documentation freeze in the
> GNOME schedule?
> 
> May be not for 2.6 because the schedule is done, but at least 
> for 2.8.
> 
> If we have a documentation freeze we would be able to translate
> (or at least have a chance) the documentation and get it ready
> for the release.
> 
> I think it will be great if we can release GNOME with 
> documentation in differents languages.
> 
> Any comments?

This is something that I've wanted to do as well.  It's not really easy
though.  If you look at the 2.6 schedule, you'll see the feature freeze
is on Jan 12 and the string freeze is on Feb 9.  If we were to assume a
documentation freeze coinciding with the string freeze (since it would
largely benefit translators), then that leaves the documentation team
with a little under a month after feature freeze.

One of the reasons for the feature and UI freeze is that it's hard to
write docs against changing interfaces.  Very often, documentation work
isn't really done on an application until after the UI freeze.  Having a
freeze on the documentation really tightens the schedule for us.

However, I do want fully translated docs, and I understand that a freeze
on documentation is important for this.  So this is definately something
we want to look into for 2.8.  It's not something we can introduce with
2.6 though.

When feature freeze hits, I'm going to start wearing my GDP Fearless
Leader hat more often, as there won't be a whole lot of work I'll be
able to do on Yelp for 2.6 at that point.  I'm planning on getting a
working documentation status table, and I want to introduce a solid
revision process to make things run more smoothly.  Hopefully with
better tools in place, a documentation freeze will be more feasible.

--
Shaun