Re: Google Summer of Code Doc Camp

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Sat, 2011-07-16 at 13:38 +0100, Phil Bull wrote:
> Hi Shaun,
> 
> On Tue, 2011-07-12 at 18:52 -0400, Shaun McCance wrote:
> > This is interesting:
> > 
> > https://sites.google.com/site/docsprintsummit/
> > 
> > Should we get in on this?
> 
> Possibly, but it seems quite focused on books. Since we're mostly doing
> topic-based help, I don't know if we'd get much out of it.

I tweeted something to the same effect. We're not really in the business
of doing book-like things. I don't know why people get so hung up on
doing books.

> Do we have any software that requires a quick-start guide? (Evolution
> might be a candidate, for example.) We should possibly think about doing
> more guide-based documentation, but I don't think we'd ever need
> anything more than short guides. Books seem like overkill.

I'd be curious to see how Adam Hyde would approach a book-like thing
for GNOME users. But I don't think it's something we'd end up using
and maintaining long-term, so it would mostly be a curiosity. I think
our team has gotten really good a topic-oriented help, and we could
probably help others starting down that path.

The doc camp might be more beneficial for developer docs. Although I
think we've got a good (and not book-like) plan in place for that. We
just need more people working on it more often.

I'll probably apply to go to the doc camp regardless. But I can just
go as an individual contributor if we don't think it's worth sending
the GNOME team.

--
Shaun