Drake's #docs Dialogue

[Eric Baudais <drake x8b4e541f dhcp okstate edu>]

This is a summary of the day's activities in the #docs channel on
irc.mint.net.  A lot of important discussion goes on in the channel during  
a day and these summaries should provide an insight to the current
happenings of the GDP.

This summary covers 12 Feb. 2000.

1) Gnome 1.2 is supposed to be released in two weeks.  We need to get busy
writing the docs for gnome-core applications.  These are the most
crtitical, but unfortunately the most time intensive to write.

2) The GDP needs a volunteer to write the official GDP Weekly Summary
which should be posted on Gnotices.  This will be similar to the Gnome
Weekly Summary, but related to the GDP and it shouldn't repeat anything
said in the Gnome Weekly Summary.

3) Jacob Berkman has volunteered to commit any completed docs to the CVS
and include them in the next release of Gnome.  Hopefully he can also help
getting developers to link completed docs to the related applications.

4) Anyone writing docs for gnome-core applications that appear in the
Gnome User's Guide (UG) is encouraged to take the information presented in
the UG to use in their doc.  The current strategy is to "strip" the UG of
all useful information and rewrite it using the completed docs for
gnome-core apps.

5) The current order of importance for documenting Gnome is:
   1. gnome-core apps
   2. gnome-core applets
   3. gnome-applets

6) If anyone needs to edit the DocTable, you will need to login.  To
obtain a username and password contact Dan Mueth <d-mueth@uchicago.edu>.

7) Steve George made the point that editors can create a catherdal
structure, which we want to avoid.  The editors could become a restricted
and elite "inner circle" of the GDP controlling which docs get committed.
I think this can be avoided by giving the doc authors a choice to either
ask an editor to check their documentation, asking another "learned"
member of the GDP to go over their doc, or send the documentation to the
gnome-doc-list to check for clarity and correct DocBook markup.

8) Everyone writing docs should use the V3.1 DTD of DocBook instead
of the V3.0 DTD of DocBook.  It was discovered that the <legalnotice> tag
was omitted from version 3.0, but then included in version 3.1.

9) The best estimate for the Gnome 2.0 release is early next fall.  We
*have* to finish all the gnome-core docs and gnome-applet docs and verify
all the docs are compliant with the new help browser before Gnome 2.0 is
released.

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The funny quote for Saturday 12 February 2000 is from telsa:

* telsa has a bigger problem.
<telsa> (which is why I'm not talking much, bit of [natural gas] explosion
prevention going on here.)

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This is the first edition of Drake's #docs Dialogue.

If anyone has anything to contribute to Drake's #docs Dialogue, contact
Eric Baudais <baudais@okstate.edu> before 1:00am Central Standard Time.


Drake