Meeting Minutes 2010-04-18

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

Empathy 2.30 Updates
--------------------
* Needs updates for facebook, video codecs, and IRC.

Gnome 3.0 Desktop Help
----------------------
* Shaun to branch gnome-user-docs to gnome-3-0; use gnome-help
  as on-disk name of document. (Not using master to avoid churn
  for translators.)
* We should have a list of easy-to-write pages for contributors
  to cherry pick from.
* Discussion of week-long doc hackfest.

Style Guide
-----------
* Phil would like some new style recommendations. Suggested
  using the wiki instead of gnome-devel-docs. No decisions.

<shaunm> who's here?
<shaunm> pcutler: around?
<shaunm> no phil
--> philbull (~philbull 91 109 118 19) has joined #docs
--> billyoc (~billyoc cpe-74-66-13-227 nyc res rr com) has joined #docs
<shaunm> hey look, it's a phil!
<shaunm> now we can start
<philbull> hello!
<shaunm> http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Meetings201004
<shaunm> empathy
<Gwaihir> I'm behind schedule...
<shaunm> what can we do to help?
<Gwaihir> kick me hard :)
<shaunm> heh
<Gwaihir> I can manage to have it for this week
<shaunm> tarballs for 2.30.1 are due the 26th
<Gwaihir> 22nd is the last madness day for translation
<shaunm> and maintainers often roll releases the weekend before, so the 24th is probably the last safe date
<Gwaihir> so after that I'm pretty "free"
<shaunm> (we can ask the developers to hold off til monday if we need them to)
<Gwaihir> yeah, for thursday I should have done at least the facebook part and the irc part
<Gwaihir> not sure about the video codec thing
<Gwaihir> if somebody want to write that down, that would be cool
<shaunm> what needs to be done about video codecs?
<Gwaihir> there is an error that appears when you do not have video codec
<Gwaihir> or when the other person doesn't
<Gwaihir> might be good to add something in the troubleshooting part
<shaunm> ok
<shaunm> and for facebook? do we need an account details page for it, or?
<Gwaihir> not that, but since it's the default selection
<Gwaihir> at least point to the website for subscribing
<Gwaihir> like we do for jabber and other protocols
<shaunm> ok
<shaunm> ah
<shaunm> and irc. just need to deal with the password-protected channels? anything else?
<Gwaihir> password protected channel was done for 2.30
<Gwaihir> thanks to jim
<shaunm> oh, really? I thought that slipped
<shaunm> cool
<Gwaihir> we need to fix the thing about the detailed IRC page
<Gwaihir> we need to link that in a sane way without duplicating the note about the telepathy-idle package
<Gwaihir> the last thing would be reordering some of the topics
<Gwaihir> also for IRC, that's pretty easy though
<shaunm> should we just duplicate that note across a few irc pages?
<Gwaihir> I think we have to, in at least two pages
<Gwaihir> the IRC guide page
<Gwaihir> and the detailed IRC page, since this one is linked from another guide page and has a direct access path
<shaunm> that's where it currently is, yes?
<Gwaihir> yep
<Gwaihir> we only need to copy it on the IRC guide page
<shaunm> (we could use xinclude to transclude it)
<shaunm> or we could just copy it. no big deal
<Gwaihir> yeah... no problem with translations for that
<Gwaihir> so is almost the same
<shaunm> hmm
<shaunm> ok
<Gwaihir> apart from the codec thing, I can mange to do this in one night
<Gwaihir> the reordering might take a little bit more just to check things out
<shaunm> I'd prioritize organizational tweaks lower than good content
<Gwaihir> sure, no problem
<shaunm> (not that it's not good to do)
<shaunm> anything else about empathy?
<Gwaihir> there might be one thing that it's not that easy to insert in a topic: the possibility to search inside the current discussion
<shaunm> you can do that?
<Gwaihir> looks like...
<Gwaihir> I haven't tried it yet though
<Gwaihir> I think you have to press Ctrl+F
<philbull> Edit -> Find works too
<shaunm> is that new in 2.30? doesn't work for me on 2.28
<Gwaihir> new in 2.30
<shaunm> ok
<shaunm> I'm not sure anybody will go to the help for that
<shaunm> if it's there in the menus, they'll see it or they won't
<shaunm> maybe worth putting a note about it in the page for viewing previous conversations
<philbull> Tips and tricks...
--> sebp (~sebp f053229173 adsl alicedsl de) has joined #docs
<shaunm> maybe
<Gwaihir> could be, do we have also other tips & trick?
<shaunm> but really, ^F is in every web browser and text editor and help viewer on the planet. is it really a big tip?
<Gwaihir> I don't like to have a tips & trick section with only one :)
<Gwaihir> yeah, it's pretty standard that
<philbull> it's discoverable I guess
<shaunm> (wow, it is so stupidly easy to jump to a page I want in yelp master. just sayin')
<philbull> no need to cover it
<philbull> (Apart from maybe "I can't find something in a conversation, but I know it's there somewhere!")
<shaunm> yeah, but how would they ever get to the page?
<shaunm> speaking of which, I know we've talked about better help menu items
<shaunm> and in the case of empathy, we have the contact list and chat windows, and probably some others
<shaunm> and they can have different menu items
<shaunm> something to think about for 3.0, what we'd like in those menus
<shaunm> anyway
<shaunm> gnome desktop help?
<Gwaihir> yep, we can discuss that at guadec too
<Gwaihir> (the help menu thing, not desktop help)
<shaunm> yeah
<shaunm> philbull: how's things?
<philbull> I haven't started writing myself, yet
<philbull> but I have someone from Ubuntu-docs who's written a couple of topics
<shaunm> ok
<shaunm> nice
<philbull> they're in my Inbox somewhere, I need to review and edit
<shaunm> would we like to have a place to put these in git?
<Gwaihir> yep
<philbull> yes
<shaunm> ok
<Gwaihir> gnome-3-0 branch :O
<shaunm> I'll branch gnome-user-docs and add a new document
<shaunm> I think we can just branch off gnome-2-30 and use master for 3.0, no?
<Gwaihir> I think that for the time being it is better if that branch doesn't show up on damned lies though
<shaunm> is gnome-help ok for the document name?
<shaunm> I mean the on-disk name, not the human-readable title of course
<Gwaihir> sounds good to me
<philbull> +1
<shaunm> all right, then we can do a gnome-3-0 branch
<philbull> Once we get started I think we can get topics in there pretty quickly
<shaunm> we could also just use .page.stub, which I don't think DL will pick up
<philbull> I'll find some time mid-week to write a few
<Gwaihir> I can start with the next week
<Gwaihir> but I would also like to work on other applications help
<shaunm> so I think it would be nice if, instead of just writing everything, we could come up with a list of pages to write
<Gwaihir> maybe we can kickstart a couple, and ask on mailing list/planet if somebody would like to help out with that
<shaunm> and advertise these heavily
--- rib_away is now known as rib
<Gwaihir> agree
<shaunm> and I realize that doing that may actually involve more work than just doing it ourselves, but it's how we grow our community
<philbull> yes, that's true
<philbull> I'd like to get some basic style guidelines in place before we advertise too much
<shaunm> because if it's just three of us going into 3.0 (and that mostly means two of you), we're pretty screwed
<Gwaihir> we have also a11y to work on
<shaunm> uh huh
<Gwaihir> and we are screwed there right now...
<Gwaihir> can we have an a11y session for docs at guadec?
<shaunm> maybe we can see if the foundation will fund a doc hackfest
<Gwaihir> that would be awesome
<shaunm> a real one, not stuck onto the end of something else.
<Gwaihir> yep, an entire weel
<Gwaihir> week
<shaunm> oh hell yes. but can people afford the time?
<philbull> I have a lot of free time after the 1st of June until the end of September
<Gwaihir> I can manage that, as long as it is not too close to guadec
<Gwaihir> I don't have a lot of days off to take
<shaunm> philbull: do you not work during the summer?
<philbull> I graduate in a couple of months, and I don't start my PhD 'til October
<shaunm> ooh nice
<Gwaihir> cool
<philbull> I'll have stuff to work on in the mean time, but I'll have nowhere near my current workload
<shaunm> so maybe next time we can do it in europe, instead of making you guys fly over here all the time
<Gwaihir> :)
<philbull> Venice is nice this time of year...
<Gwaihir> and expensive too :)
<philbull> :(
<pcutler> sorry I'm late, sundays at noon are hard for me with the kids
<Gwaihir> beware of the volcano though ;)
<philbull> hey pcutler
<Gwaihir> hi pcutler
<shaunm> PAUL!
<shaunm> pcutler: I just figured you were busy rocking out to Queen on vinyl
<pcutler> heh  :)
<pcutler> checked off a goal of the past few years:  buy a turntable
<shaunm> it's on my list
<shaunm> ok
<shaunm> philbull: style guide
<philbull> yes
<philbull> we need one
<shaunm> yes
<shaunm> Gwaihir and I talked about what to do about terminology recommendations sitting at the airport
<philbull> can we stop calling them radio buttons yet?
<shaunm> I think it was something like "meet up at guadec and put down what we like, ask community for input"
<shaunm> going through the whole thing ping-ponging on the list will take AGES
<Gwaihir> yes, we say to do a brainstorming/writing session at guadec
<Gwaihir> even after the real conference
<shaunm> but guadec is pretty late
<Gwaihir> that's true...
<shaunm> if we want some guidelines in place for getting people to work on gnome-help now
<shaunm> I'
<philbull> terminology isn't so important just yet
<shaunm> I'll probably be there for the whole pre-conference, by the way, if people want to come early and meet up
<philbull> I'm thinking about tone, and what not to write about
<shaunm> agreed
--> kmaraas (~kmaraas 78 80-202-74 nextgentel com) has joined #docs
<pcutler> I'll be available Mon, but not Tues
<philbull> and how to logically split up topics
<shaunm> so there's kind of this gray area between the style guidelines and the docs handbook
<Gwaihir> (I'll be at GUADEC hopefully on the 24th, so there all week)
<shaunm> and maybe we should just nuke the dichotomy and make one document
<philbull> I guess
<shaunm> I may be presenting during the pre-conference as well, so I'll be getting there earlyish
<philbull> (we should do it on the wiki anyway)
<shaunm> really? and just kill the documents in gnome-devel-docs?
<philbull> I think so
<philbull> it's so much easier to maintain on the wiki
<-- j1mc_ has quit (leaving)
<shaunm> what else?
<Gwaihir> it's easy that people can mess it up though, on the wiki
<philbull> we can add write protection on it
<philbull> it's moin, right?
<shaunm> unfortunately, yes
<philbull> I mean, I don't have a very strong preference for doing it on the wiki
<shaunm> there's a soc proposal for an online mallard editor
--> aday (~aday 93-97-4-154 zone5 bethere co uk) has joined #docs
<shaunm> could be we'll have the ease of a wiki with mallard goodness in revision control in a few months anyway
<shaunm> (standard disclaimer about never blocking real work on crazy shit that might or might not be developed)
<philbull> for now I think I'll throw something together and post it on the mailing list in the next weeks or so
<shaunm> anybody have anything else to discuss?
<shaunm> I want to get some input on icons, but I can do that on-list
<shaunm> (seriously need a designer on the doc team)
<Gwaihir> can we ask the gnome-art team?
<Gwaihir> they do some serious amazing works
<shaunm> they do
<shaunm> but they're also busy
<shaunm> and generally have higher priorities than yelp stuff
<philbull> no harm in asking
<shaunm> of course, and I will
<shaunm> but I want to chat with docs folks first about what to do
<shaunm> I think that can be done on the list. I'll send an email later today
<shaunm> are we done?
<philbull> sure
<shaunm> great, pancake time then
<Gwaihir> dinner time for me