Re: Interested in working with you

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Thu, 2010-11-25 at 04:23 -0700, Nan Clegg wrote:
> My name is Nan Clegg, and while I've been using Ubuntu and Linux Mint
> both for a while now, I have never worked with any type of
> organization online such as the documentation team. I believe that I
> could be of service, and I would love to get more involved, I was
> looking through all of the tasks for Ubuntu docs and saw a couple of
> places I am specifically interested in pursuing the chance to write
> documentation. The problem is that I'm nervous, and not sure how to go
> about helping. I am interested in helping write docs for
> gnome-app-install (the package manager),  gwibber, and synaptic. Under
> Synaptic it says it is in progress, so I don't if I can help there,
> but the other two sections seem to have no one working on them.
> My real question is, do I just go through the process of writing it,
> following the guidelines and submitting, or do I need to talk with
> someone first and tell them I want to work on a specific project?
> While reading through, I wasn't clear on which of these to do.

Hi Nan,

Sorry for the late response. It was a long holiday weekend
in the US.

GNOME and Ubuntu have separate documentation teams, though we
often work closely together. Much of the software you see on
your Ubuntu system comes from GNOME. Some applications come
from Ubuntu, and others from independent developers. So how
to proceed depends on which project you want to work on.

For the package management applications, you should talk to
the Ubuntu documentation team. Here's their mailing list:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc

For Gwibber, you should get in contact with the Gwibber team.
They have contact information on their Launchpad page:

https://launchpad.net/gwibber

I don't see any help files for Gwibber yet. I don't know how
they'll want to manage their documentation. The GNOME team
can certainly provide guidance and feedback.

Most projects write their documentation in either DocBook or
Mallard format. DocBook is a well-established format for
writing traditional, linear manuals. Mallard is a new format
used by GNOME and some other projects to write topic-oriented
help. Learn DocBook and Mallard here and here:

http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/html/docbook.html
http://projectmallard.org/about/learn/

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. We're all
here to help.

Thanks,
Shaun