Re: PROPOSAL: UISG Menu Line Standardization

[John R Sheets <dusk smsi-roman com>]

George wrote:
> 
> > Yep.  Exactly.  The developers should write the docs and that'd be the end
> > of it.

Don't quite agree with that.  It'd be nice if they did, but we
shouldn't put any provisions into the style guide about who's
responsible for creating them.  The word "should" is my only real
problem with this statement.
 
> I don't see why really ... docs are written by whoever wants to write
> docs ... rarely is the app so complicated that only the author can write
> any docs for it

Yep.  Bottom line, if a developer really wants his app to become
GNOME-compliant, beyond the first level or two, then he will see
to it that the docs get written.  If he doesn't care about GNOME
compliance, then there's nothing we can do.  We can only shake
our head and say "not yet compliant".  The style guide should
have a passive approach to issues like this.

We can only set conditions on the state of the final product. 
The style guide shouldn't care in the least who does what.  Who
cares about the development cycle?  As long as good documentation
is a GC3 style (obviously not GC1), the documentation will take
care of itself.  If people want an app to be GC3, and
documentation is the only thing holding it back, _someone_ will
pick up the ball.  If not, then no GC3.

We can (and should) set down some guidelines about how good the
documentation should be in order to satisfy so-and-so compliancy
level (though probably the gui-list isn't the best place for that
discussion), so that documentation will tend to improve at a
steady, progressive pace as the app grows more & more compliant. 
This should head off the minimum-quality UTSL situation.

Can we maybe agree that although the developer is (barring
communication skills) best-equipped to produce the documentation
for a project, he should not be required to do so?  It seems to
me that everything beyond this simple point is semantics &
philosophy, has already been debated at length here, and should
be moved off the list.  Sound reasonable?  (c:

John