Re: Proposal of documentation freeze

[John Fleck <jfleck inkstain net>]

On Tue, 2004-01-06 at 08:47, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 02:08:01AM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > <quote who="Germ?n Po? Caama?o">
> > 
> > > 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.
> > 
> > (Yeah, I think this would be better off handled for 2.8.)
> > 
> > If you guys can figure out some timelines that suit both teams, I think we'd
> > be very happy to see this happen. Thanks!
> 
> This sounds like a good idea.  Is a doc freeze intended to help get
> the docs translated ?  I suspect that will be rather late in the
> game, possibly too late to be of use.  If we ignore getting screenshots
> localized then ui/string freezes won't apply and the only constrain
> would be feature freeze.  However, writing docs is a fairly time
> consuming process.  How much time do you envision giving the docs
> folk before freezing ?

We have a schedule now that essentially allows two months for the
documentation to be completed: one month after the sort of soft initial
feature/UI/module freeze and then another month, roughly, after the
super deep freeze.

Our choices are:
 a) shorten that time frame, inserting a docs freeze in there at some
point, or
 b) shift the entire schedule backward to allow a docs translation
period.

In my experience over the past several release cycles, the current
amount of time for docs completion after the start of the freezes has
been sufficient, but not particularly luxurious. (It may simply be that
we're lazy, and will consume whatever time is given. :-) 2.6 seems to be
seeing fewer changes, requiring less docs work, so it will be a good
test of whether the amount of time needed to freeze and write docs could
be reduced.

I think the smart thing to do is pay close attention during this 2.6
cycle to the timing of the docs work and see where in the schedule there
is room to squeeze some time out for the translators. In the 2.6 post
mortem we can hash this over and come up with a plan for 2.8.

Cheers,
John