GNOME Documentation Updates

["Paul Cutler" <pcutler foresightlinux org>]

Hi, I wanted to follow up on Shaun's email below regarding GNOME docs,
and where to get started and how to help, separate from the freeze and
translation discussion.

I am very interested in helping out with GNOME Docs, and helped the
Tomboy team with some documentation updates for this past GNOME 2.22
release.

I've spent some time on LGO and in Bugzilla, but it's difficult to
understand where to jump in and help.

Starting at http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject:

*Contributing & Joining:  Takes you to a page filled with links to
other wikis (http://live.gnome.org/InterWiki)

* Tasks:  Takes you to the same link.

95% of those links aren't GNOME related.  Where should a new
contributor really start?

The wiki page also warns you that that the GDP's home page on
developer.gnome.org (http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gdp/) - and
it is, with the linked Tasks discussing GNOME 2.0.

* List of wiki pages concerning the GPD leads you to a blank page.

* Roadmap link (http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/RoadMap)
discusses GNOME 2.18

I'm not trying to be critical - I want to help out, but I'm not sure
where to start, and I'm wondering if other new people who want to
contribute have seen the same things.  Other than knowing a project
needs help via PGO or an email to this list like the Empathy email the
other day, it's a bit confusing on where to start.

I'd love to help out, but I'm looking for some help with the above or
some mentoring.

Paul Cutler

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>
Date: Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: Improving things for translators
To: Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>
Cc: gnome-i18n gnome org, gnome-doc-list gnome org, release-team gnome org

<snip>

 Indeed.  Documentation writing doesn't really heat up
 until after the feature freeze, which is roughly half
 way through our release cycle.  That leaves the team
 three months to update all the documentation.  Factor
 in these facts:

 1) Our documentation is out of date, sometimes by as
 much as a few years.  We're still trying to clear the
 backlog, so to speak, which makes for an even heavier
 workload.  If we ever caught up, we'd be in a better
 position to make future updates in a timely manner.

 2) The desktop release contains 86 documents.  Some
 of them are smallish, but some of them are huge.  We
 add new modules with every release.

 3) We have almost no active writers at the moment.
 Virtually all updates are those that Ubuntu sends
 upstream.  I'm way too busy being a hacker to be
 a writer.


 --
 Shaun