Re: adopting the Style Guide

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

"Rebecca J. Walter" wrote:
> > Maybe you can share with my why the GIMP documentation project chose to
> > undertake this arduous task.
> 
> We didn't.  I didn't even know that was happening until now.  We have 1
> writer right now.  He is trying desperately to get everything covered.

I probably shouldn't jump into this discussion, but wouldn't it be
easier if the GIMP Documentation Project and GNOME Documentation Project
joined forces? To me it seems like an unnecessary burden to have to
distinguish the two, with seperated guidelines, discussions, procedures,
etc.

I think we have convinced GIMP people to use the GNOME Translation
Project for translations, and I think that only makes sense. Sharing
procedures saves a lot of work.
If you have some special exceptions from the GNOME guidelines, these can
probably be put in a seperate document and clearly labeled as
exceptions. In any case, I think it helps to think of "us" instead of
"we and them" - If I were a GIMP docs writer (don't laugh), thinking "We
are the GNOME Documentation Project, we use the GNOME styleguide, in the
case of GIMP with the few notable and important exceptions mentioned in
this document" instead of "We GIMP Documentation Project, they GNOME
Documentation Project" would be much more comfortable in the long run.
The later would just feel like an unnecessary process of trying to
seperate the two, which in the end would make my head explode.

I think this resembles how we do it in the Swedish GNOME translation
team - we share a common word list with terminology we have agreed upon,
but everyone is still free to maintain their own translation and free to
ignore any recommendations if they wish so. There's no question about
that. As I understand it, this would also be the case of the style
guide. I'm sure people would respect the fact that GIMP has its own
tradition of writing some things a certain way.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is basically that it's easier to maintain a
list of exceptions, than to maintain a complete seperate style guide,
even if it should be based on some version of the other guide, I think.
It also helps to think of "us" instead of "we and them".

But I'm not a doc writer, and maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
Feel free to ignore my ramblings. ;-)


Christian