Re: you know...

[Ekaterina Gerasimova <kittykat3756 gmail com>]

On 06/02/2015, Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 2:36 AM, Ekaterina Gerasimova
> <kittykat3756 gmail com> wrote:
> > On 06/02/2015, Sriram Ramkrishna <sri ramkrishna me> wrote:
> > > You know just having an IDE is not enough, it would be great if we
> > > could get someone to write a a book or something on gnome development
> > > that we can sell and use the proceeds to fund GNOME.
> >
> > It would be great, but writing a good book takes a lot of time and
> > effort so I would find it surprising if someone was to write one and
> > donate the rights to GNOME. If it happens, great, but it doesn't seem
> > likely.
>
> Indeed.  Also, it will be out of date a year after publishing given
> how fast we are developing new things.
>
> > Another approach would be to organise something along the lines of a
> > book sprint. These basically work a bit like a very targeted, short
> > hackfests. The first day is spent planning out the index, splitting it
> > into short chapters and letting the attendees pick what they're
> > working on. The second day is writing (usually 1-2 chapters per
> > person) and the third day is for reviewing. By the fourth day, we had
> > a short, published book in our hands. This did inspire a similar
> > approach from the documentation team towards some of the devel docs in
> > the last year which were written as relatively self-contained guides
> > with examples and could be taken for a book quite easily. The key to
> > organising something like this is to get the leading developers into
> > one room.
>
> I really like this method.  I think it might be worth investing in
> that.  Mostly because this is probably the best way to have a
> sustained, up to date model.  We just need to identify the core things
> tha won't change.  We could use Builder as the basis of that writing
> since there is going to be a lot of helper stuff in Builder that will
> make writng things like gobject code easier. (according to builder
> page)
>
> > The other issue to consider if that our toolkit and even application
> > design change quite quickly so the book would become outdated fast.
>
> Yeah, and this is quite true...  that's why I like your idea, it
> becomes part of the development cycle.  The only problem doing it from
> a 'community' perspective is that we won't be able to write things in
> a single 'voice'.  Or rather, we will need a good editor that can warp
> it into a single voice.  It is a little off putting when one chapter
> is using a different set of word choices than another because say one
> speaker is English and the other is American or Canadian.  (a nod to
> you making fun of each other's pronunciations of english words. :-)

The documentation team generally uses US spelling with British English
grammar as US spelling is more common while British grammar is more
explicit, so clearer for non-native speakers… regardless, I feel that
the style does come out relatively consistent after a review.

For it to become part of the development cycle, you would need a group
of people who are dedicated to keeping it up-to-date and can track
technical changes in GNOME.

> > One way around this is to use an on-demand printing service so that we
> > don't have to hold books in stock.
>
> Makes sense.  I like these innovative ideas!
>
> If we were to do something like that.. what kind of resources would be
> required and do we have them and is it on someone's radar?

I think you need to get 2-3 people together who are interested in
making this happen, then reach out to core developers to see how they
feel about the idea. It would be good if you have a clearly defined
idea of what the aim of the book would be/what it would cover, but
leave the exact content to be decided by those who write it so that
they feel some ownership over it.

There is a lot of useful information already at
https://wiki.gnome.org/HowDoI which can be reused.