Re: Documentation on the New GNOME Website

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants or`g>]

<quote who="John Fleck">

> The Technical
> *************
> 
> Can I assume you've got some scripting magic planned by which a master
> list of docs in cvs is kept, from which up-to-date html is built for the
> web site? And this scripting magic will be smart enough to pull from
> whichever branch we tell it?

Yeah, but rather than being a 'master list', it integrates directly into the
website build system. You tell a given directory that its content comes from
a particular CVS server, module, branch/tag, which file is the root document
etc. The docs are pulled in and built as if they were part of the tree
already.

> We need to remember localization - we'll soon have docs translated into
> a plethora of languages, so the file structure needs to be able to
> accommodate that.

The website i18n stuff has been punted for the initial version, but working
out what needs to be done for docs now would be good. What's the file
structure, etc? Are you using the intltool stuff yet?

> For extra credit, it would be marvelous if we also could have prebuilt
> pdf's available as well. This is a common request.

Hmm! That could be done automagically too, and linked from the sidebar very
nicely. What a groovy feature. ;-)

> The Content
> ***********
> 
> I'd like to see all of the user docs incorporated into this system,
> including the amazingly comprehensive and cool UG and Sasha's
> Introduction to GNOME.
> 
> Malcolm's porting guide should be included, as should the G2 release
> notes.
> 
> This also provides an opportunity to think about the status of other docs
> we have floating around that are useful but in a state of dusty
> uncertainty - the glossary, the unix primer. What other docs should we be
> discussing?

I'm mostly interested in user-oriented docs atm, since we already have lots
of developer-oriented stuff already, but having two lists of documents (user
vs. developer) would be very useful.

This is a great opportunity to fix the missing content on gnome.org, and
write some badly needed documentation! :-)

- Jeff

-- 
   "When there's public debate and mass hysteria, that's when the patches   
                         roll in." - Michael Meeks