Re: Getting Started with GNOME Docs

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Sun, 2007-08-26 at 17:52 +1200, John Williams wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I would like to contribute some user documentation to Conduit
> (http://conduit-project.org), and am wondering if Foie Gras is anywhere
> near usable yet, or will be so in the near (e.g. next few weeks) future?

Foie Gras is an editor for the upcoming Mallard documentation
format.  Even if it were usable now, Yelp doesn't currently
support Mallard, so it wouldn't be any help.  The goal is to
have Mallard in place for 2.22.  We'll convert a select few
documents over and see how things go.  If we can irons out
the issues, we'll try to convert the rest of the user help
over for 2.24.

> I am perfectly willing to go through the steps outlined here
> (http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Contributing), is that still
> current?  However I am loathe to do so if the knowledge I gain will be
> obsolete in six months ;-)
> 
> Also, I would like to contribute to GNOME docs in general, but am not
> really a coder.  I am familiar with HTML, XML, DocBook etc. however.
> And I am an unsufferable pedant.  Is the GNOME Docs pages on l.g.o. the
> best and most up-to-date place to look for tasks to pick up?

That page is more or less current, if sparse.  In the past,
we've tried writing the content of the documents on the wiki
and manually converting them to DocBook when they're ready
(or when the release is imminent).

This has been somewhat successful, but it requires a fairly
large amount of work and coordination.  It's really only worth
doing if there's a group of people who want to work quickly
and collaboratively, and if there's somebody who is taking
responsibility for coordinating the wiki<->DocBook process.

The only non-trivial skill that may become obsolete (or at
least less relevant) is DocBook.  But since you already know
DocBook, you don't need to *learn* something that may become
obsolete.

In the last couple of release cycles, Joachim was taking
charge of much of the documentation.  But he seems to have
disappeared, so nearly every document is probably ripe for
the taking.  Just let the list know what document you want
to work on, and we can help you through things.

--
Shaun