Re: Request for comment (doc team): release date for GNOME 3.0

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 17:12 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The release team is gathering comments from various teams to get a
> proper idea of which of March or September 2010 is more appropriate for
> the release of GNOME 3.0. The decision for the release date is following
> what we set in the 3.0 planning document [1]: we want 3.0 to be out in
> 2010, but we also want to make sure that 3.0 is rock-solid; your input
> will help us take an informed decision.
> 
> It'd be great if someone could summarize the status of the work that is
> being done in your team (especially for mallard, I guess), and how March or
> September would work for you.

Yelp 3.0 should be ready by March, although I should mention
that it blocks on WebKit accessibility work.  I won't ship an
inaccessible help viewer.  If we have to, we can use Yelp 2,
although I think 3.0 will deliver a much better experience.

As for the documentation, there's a lot of work to be done.
We will do our best to prioritize our work.  My feeling is
that the new Desktop Help is essential, including integrating
the accessibility help.  We can work on application help files
incrementally as we have time or as people have interest.

By March, I think we could have the bones of the Desktop Help
in place, but it wouldn't be nearly as useful as it could be.
Based on what I'm seeing, I'll give a wild guesstimate that
about a dozen small application help documents will be done
in Mallard, not because they're the most urgent, but because
they're low-hanging fruit.

We can do substantially more by September, of course.  I'm
particularly interested in seeing results of usability tests
and reactions of early adopters for Gnome Shell.  This can
help us shape what help we provide.  See Owen's comments on
desktop-devel-list about the feasibility of this.

On a side note, I'm concerned about the state of developer
documentation for Gnome 3.  We have a lot of new technologies
and new ways for applications to integrate into the desktop.
To encourage uptake from third-party developers, I would like
to see a coherant message about what our platform is, and to
have it as well documented as we can.

--
Shaun