Re: An introduction

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2004-01-19 at 05:55, Andrew Miller wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'd like to volunteer my services to help out with GNOME documentation.
> I've been using GNOME on and off for several years now and I'd like to
> give something back to everyone who has made it so great.
> 
> Just as a bit of background, I'm currently employed as a professional
> writer for an Australian computer magazine (a minor amount of digging
> should unearth which one). I'm capable of writing documentation,
> proofreading, editing and sub-editing. I'm also a programmer, so I'm not
> too afraid of diving into things of a more technical nature.
> 
> Basically, I just wanted to announce my presence and let everyone know 
> I'd like to help. I'd be happy to hear from people suggesting first
> steps and things I might be able to start out with.

Hi Drew,

Welcome aboard.  I'm not fully awake yet, so what follows is a random
listing of largely incoherant tips on getting involved.

We're in feature freeze for GNOME 2.6, which is the most critical time
for documentation.  This is when everybody runs around trying to update
the documentation for new features, interface changes, etc.  There's a
listing of all the documentation in the GNOME Desktop at

http://www.gnome.org/~shaunm/doctable/

I'd like people to help review the documentation.  We don't really have
any coordinated review process this time around (though I hope to get
something in place for 2.8).  Just pick a document and read it.  File
bugs about any problems you see.

It helps to be running the development series of GNOME, so you can see
the new features and know what remains to be documented.  But you can
also look for spelling and grammar errors, questionable style, problems
with the DocBook markup, etc.

Also check out

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gdp/resources.html

You'll see links to the Handbook and the Style Guide, both of which are
worth reading if you'd like to work on the documentation.

A lot of us hang out on IRC in the #docs channel on irc.gnome.org.

If you don't mind getting your hands dirty with code, I always welcome
new contributors to Yelp.  Since we're in feature freeze, the focus now
is bugfixes for the upcoming 2.6 release.  However, there is a *lot* of
really cool stuff to be done for 2.8, which is about 8 months away.

And if you know code *and* you write well *and* you know stuff about the
GNOME Developer Platform, you're a prime candidate for helping out with
developer documentation.  I'll be starting a fairly ambitious project to
make some awesome developer manuals in a month or two.

Also, there's a lot of work to be done on content management tools, such
as a documentation status table that works, translation tools, etc.

--
Shaun