GUADEC notes, introduction

[aaron <aaron i-site com>]

Hi.  I'm Aaron Weber, and although I met some of you at GUADEC I'd like
to introduce myself again anyway.  I'm going to be starting as a
full-time doc writer at Helix Code on april first, and although I've not
been active in GNOME docs before I'm really excited about working with
all of you.  So, bear with me as I get up to speed... you can write me
at aaron@i-site.com until i get my helix code mail configured. (should
be about 2 weeks).

Following are my notes from the GUADEC meetings.  Comments are obviously
welcome, and i should note that there are probably some errors in here.
Let me know if this is all wrong.

cheers.
a.

 DECISIONS:
We will use DocBook 4.0 and SGML until further notice. (i.e. until
DocBook 5.0 and really mature XML support).
We will use the PNG-supporting variant of DocBook.
We will release all documentation under the GNU FDL.
For v. 1.2 we will focus on getting all the currently written documents
included & distributed.  This will be in April.
After that, we'll focus on getting more documentation done, and setting
up our really complete fantastic help system stuff.

GENERAL FEELINGS:
More cooperation among the GDP, LDP, OSWG, etc.  OSWG will be
particularly helpful in indexing the help docs.
Make it real easy to help out.  Also, recruiting is good.

The Nice People at O'Reilley have a great deal of experience with
DocBook and we should seek their input.

The Nice People at Eazel will need to be gotten in touch with about
context-sensitive help and the various usability concerns, and also
should be consulted and kept informed about documentation progress,
since Nautilus is going to be an important way to browse the help
system.

How should help be accessed?
Particularly of concern about user interface is: should we have a
tree-view?
 Probably we ought to include tree-view because many users expect it.
and it's a good way to find what you're looking for if you know what you
want.

Other views/options for accessing help: Context-sensitive, Index,
Search, and maybe a glossary.  The glossary will probably need to be
independant of and exterior to other documentation, and this will make
it a larger task than we thought at first.

Documentation of Sawmill, especially the caplett, ought to be a higher
priority than it is now, since it's now our default for screenshots, and
since people keep wanting to use it.

TASKS:
Jonathan or Dave will put the docbook tools, etc. into an RPM for easier
distribution.
Telsa will have a go at reorganizing the doc file locations
Everybody will go out and recruit.
Aaron will use the next two weeks to get up to speed on the tools for
documentation building so he can hit the ground running the first week
in april.