Re: Evolution documentation update

[Bharath Acharya <abharath gnome org>]

On Sun, 2010-09-19 at 13:27 +0100, Phil Bull wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> I thought I'd give you a quick update on the progress of the Evolution
> documentation rewrite.

Hello Phil,

Thank you for all the updates.

> 
> We're currently working on converting the material in the FAQ [1] to the
> new Mallard format [2]; there's a Gitorious branch [3] containing all of
> the topics that have been converted so far. Out of around 110 topics, we
> have 8 reviewed and committed (7%) and another 5 or so pending review
> (5%). All of the conversion work so far has been done by April and
> Cristopher (CC'd); great work, guys! I think they'll be responsible for
> a lot of the work on these docs in the future too.

Thanks April and Cristopher for actively working on this. I checked the
commits a while back and they look great. I'll track the updates
henceforth and contribute with whatever I can.

> 
> Once we have all of the FAQ topics converted, we can start thinking
> about elements of the UI that need explanation. In particular, I've been
> looking at the more technical options in the Mail Accounts preferences.
> I think this is an area where integrating "Help" buttons into the
> interface would really benefit users. It would be good to get some input
> from the GNOME usability guys on this too.

After the FAQ, it'd be great to revisit the topics in the existing
documentation and filter it into the new format. There is a lot of
goodness in the existing documentation (2.32) which can be inherited.

And a definite +1 for the UI review. Helping the users with the
documentation at the exact sections where they need it, would help them
a lot. It would also be nice to have an option to turn them off, but
enabling them by default would be the best option I guess.

> 
> While we're identifying parts of the UI that may need explanation, we
> could also perform a string review if you like. This would identify
> strings in the UI that need to be revised due to their use of technical,
> ambiguous, or confusing language. A string review would probably produce
> a sizeable list of recommended string changes, so it would be good to
> discuss how best to manage making the changes (to reduce the translation
> and bugmail burden, for example).

That'd be real awesome if you guys can review the strings in parallel.
Let us track it in the bugzilla as we often do. Reviewing and committing
the changes in small chunks would be easy to manage I suppose?

It would be great if we can get the strings reviewed and committed in
the initial dot releases of 2.33.x to give the translation team ample
time to plan their changes for this one.

Again thanks to you and the documentation team for setting this up. This
is great news.

Regards,
Bharath

> 
> If anyone is interested in helping out with the update (there's plenty
> to do!), please let me know and I'll help you to get started. All
> comments, ideas and questions are also greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Phil
> 
> [1] - http://live.gnome.org/Evolution/FAQ
> [2] - http://projectmallard.org/
> [3] - http://gitorious.org/evolution-docs/evolution-docs
>