Re: String Change Announcements

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Thu, 2006-01-12 at 20:16 +0000, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> --- Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> 
> > A few release cycles back, the documentation team
> > began
> > asking for announcements of UI and string changes. 
> > We
> > already had a string change announcement period in
> > place
> > for the benefit of the translators, so the release
> > team
> > just made it all coincide.  Easy, no problems.
> 
> For the benefit of new members of the release team
> (including me...)
> 
> What exactly are we meant to do when we get these
> announcements?
> I'm guessing someone should check the docs for the
> relevant app and see if the changes affect the
> documentation. 
> But is there any sort of system for who checks which
> apps? Should the person who decides to check reply to
> the announcement so we all know what somebody is
> dealing with it?

Trimming devel-announce-list, since this stuff really
only concerns the documentation team.

In an ideal world, there would be a person responsible
for maintaining each document, perhaps two or three
people for larger documents.  These people would see
the string change announcements and decide what to do
about them.  Perhaps they haven't updated the relevant
section of the documentation yet, and so the string
change isn't urgent.  Or perhaps they just submitted
what they thought was a final draft, so it needs to
be dealt with immediately.

On top of that, we should have a review process in
place, which should also help to catch such things.
I've tried a couple of times in the past to set up
a formal review process, but it's difficult to do
without a good status tracker.  And I've tried a
few times in the past to set up one of those, but
we've never gotten anything official together.

Basically, if you're the person responsible for the
document in question, or if you have at least made
contributions to the document and you think it may
be affected, by all means, jump on the announcement.
Otherwise, ignore it.

--
Shaun