Re: What's the plan for the user guide?

[anjela u washington edu]

Hello,
I would like to help a little on the User Guide. I have more experience now than the last time I worked on GNOME 2.8. Let me know what I could do.
Sincerely,
Angela Boyle


On Sat, 4 Feb 2006, Shaun McCance wrote:

> On Sat, 2006-02-04 at 14:52 +0000, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> > On Sat, 2006-02-04 at 14:06 +0000, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> > > --- Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net> wrote:
> > > > > I spoke to Brent on IRC who said Shaun has a plan
> > > > to
> > > > > rewrite the guide from scratch so it can be under
> > > > a
> > > > > different licence. (Ironic that the GFDL is
> > > > rubbish
> > > > > for Gnome user docs, really.)
> > > >
> > > > Care to back this up? (URL?)
> > >
> > > http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject_2fTasks
> > > http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2005-October/msg00014.html
> > >
> > > Though surely this title business is a
> > > misinterpretation of the license? Otherwise it's plain
> > > nuts.
> >
> > Rather the latter. This went so much out of its way.
> > There are these people that complain but probably did not voice their
> > concerns when GFDL was drafted. It's annoying when they do not even
> > support/draft a new license; they just have this ''stop energy''.
> >
> > I added my concerns on the live.gnome.org page.
> >
> > Joachim, thanks for the links.
>
> Version 1.1 of the GFDL is copyright March 2000.
> If I had been involved at that time, and had had
> the experience that I now have, you can be sure
> I would have voiced my concerns at that time.
>
> As it is, while Googling around for information
> on older versions of the GFDL, I ran across this:
>
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/linux-doc-project/mail_archives/ldp-discuss/msg01000.html
>
> That's from January 2000, before the publication
> of version 1.1, but presumably during the drafting
> process.  Note that the concerns raised in that
> email are exactly what we're talking about now:
>
> * Invariant sections are evil.
> * It's not interoperable with the GPL, or any
>  other free software license for that matter.
> * Many of its requirements are cumbersome for
>  frequent modifications, particularly when
>  done by frequently-changing authors.
>
> Now, for the record, I don't think I've ever
> proposed rewriting the User Guide for the sole
> purpose of license evasion.  In fact, that's
> a very difficult thing to do, because as soon
> as you've read the current UG, you're tainted.
>
> What I have proposed is making the UG less of
> a book and more of a collection of topics.  But
> I've proposed that for the entire documentation
> stack. although I think it matters for the UG
> more than anything else.
>
> We don't have the infastructure for pluggable,
> topic-oriented help right now, so everybody
> please continue working on the documentation
> we can actually ship and display.
>
> --
> Shaun
>
>
>
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