Re: GNOME Manual of Style (was: GNOME vs. Gnome)

[Dan Mueth <d-mueth uchicago edu>]

On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, John Kodis wrote:

[SNIP]
> Also, when this is decided, it would be very handy if someone could
> pull together a "Gnome Manual of Style" that authors could refer to
> when deciding between GNOME and Gnome, Email and e-mail, left mouse
> button and mouse button one, and all the other weighty decisions we
> have hashed out on these lists over the last year or so.

Yes.  This is a very good suggestion.  I have actually had a few people
suggest this recently.  John Fleck was even generous enough to offer to
co-author a "GNOME Manual of Style".  We were originally going to put this
in the GDP Handbook (in fact we put in the sections and then commented
them out before the first version of the GDP Handbook appeared on the
web), but I like your idea of making it a stand-alone document.

Dave, Sasha, and I started putting together what would be one section of
the GMS - a description of what DocBook tags to use for various UI
components, depending upon the context they are used in.  This was a long
time ago, and we didn't quite finish it, but I think I can find it.

We will need to cover quite a few other topics, probably including:
 - proper use of various entities such an endash, emdash, hellip, ...
 - handling trademarks
 - target audience
 - how to avoid offending your reader
 - how to avoid boring your reader
 - how to make sure your document is "translatable"
 - screenshot appearances
 - diagram/illustration appearances
 - proper markup and capitalization of GNOME UI terms 
   (eg. Panel vs. panel, Main Menu vs. main menu, ...)
 - licensing
 - how to include content which is aimed outside the target audience
 - commonly used terms with multiple spellings
   (eg. e-mail vs. email vs. Email...)
 - GNOME vs Gnome

I propose we get a team of people to create a "GNOME Manual of Style" and
then present it to this mailing list for discussion and modification if
necessary.  It will require a fair amount of work as well as expertise.  
So, I'd like to see at least two core GDP people in addition to a couple
people who work with style guides in a corporate or professional setting.  
I'm hoping a technical writer or editor from Sun and maybe somebody from
Red Hat or any of the other GNOME Foundation companies would contribute.  
Of course if any GDPers have a lot of experience with style guides, then
that is even better.  John Fleck has already agreed to help, so we need
one or two other core GDPers.

If anybody has expertise in this area and would like to help, I'd
definitely like to hear from you.

Dan