Re: How to contribute to the documentation?

[Adrian Custer <acuster gmail com>]

Hey,

Thanks for your interest working on the docs; they could use as much
love as we can give them.

You start with a hard question re. footnotes. The issue there is that we
certainly don't want to have the example spreadsheets in the distributed
binaries: the documentation is big enough already that it has often been
split into a separate package in the distributions. Instead, example
spreadsheets would probably need to live on the website somewhere. That
raises the issue of where, of how to upload them, and of how to maintain
them over time. So, for now, let's start with simpler things.

Probably, the easiest way to start is to write up two good examples of
use of the inner tool which could be integrated into the documentation
itself. Here is an example of an advanced tutorial in the documentation:
http://projects.gnome.org/gnumeric/doc/sect-advanced-analysis-simulation-intro.shtml
(url probably split up in transit)
Would you feel like writing up something like that? If so, it's fairly
easy to do since there's a lot of existing documentation code to show
how to do things like tables in docbook. 

Another possibility is to start looking at the new GNOME documentation
system which I believe was developed to facilitate the 'tutorial'
approach to software. Unfortunately, I have not looked at the new system
at all and have no idea how it gets integrated into a software package. 

So there's lots of possibilities awaiting only all the hard work
actually necessary to improve the docs,

cheers,
--adrian


On Sat, 2010-04-10 at 13:31 -0700, Lee McKusick wrote:
> Hello gnumeric-list this is Lee McKusick,
>
>       I would like to contribute to the documentation. 
>
>       My initial question is:  Could we add footnotes to the user guide that
> link to example spreadsheets? 
>
>       Or to ask a little more fancy question: Could we create a gallery or
> wiki of function example spreadsheets and task example spreadsheets? Or
> could we simply make links to some of the distribution test files where
> the files are good examples of gnumeric programming?
>
>       I am a user of Gnumeric and I feel the inner tool could benefit from a
> wider ring of user support. It is a mature piece of software. Mature to
> a user like me means I'd like to see working examples with comments and
> validation tests.  
>
>       My experience is: I write a blog and I need to graph some data. I need
> to do spherical trig (in degrees) and linear regression and text file
> import and graph export tasks about once every 4 months. 
>
>       Four months is long enough time passed that I forget stuff like date
> syntax and where is the pi constant. I would use an example spreadsheet
> for ideas on how to audit and verify my programming effort. This is
> where a commented non-trivial function-example spreadsheet would help.  
>
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