Excited to get started

[Valorie Zimmerman]

On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 4:04 AM, Lydia Pintscher <lydia at kde.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 11:59, Valorie Zimmerman
> <valorie.zimmerman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all -- I'm excited to get started on the Handbook now that the
>> holidays are behind us. I found a couple of useful sites for us:
>>
>> http://www.writingopensource.com/ (EmmaJane's project -- see more
>> about her and her project in the latest Full Circle magazine, where
>> she is interviewed)
>>
>> That site linked to FLOSSManuals.net. Take a look at the first manual,
>> for Ardour: http://en.flossmanuals.net/Ardour/Introduction . We might
>> get some ideas about organization and presentation from that.
>>
>> I seriously think we should consider publishing our manual on that
>> site when we finish it. Of course we will have our
>> version-in-the-works at our wiki, am I right?
>
> No we need to get it into proper KDE documentation to have it
> translated and available offline within Amarok.

I guess this is where the rubber meets the road. Clicking around KDE
Techbase a bit, I found our Amarok Guide to Git. I assume that's where
the Handbook will end up, to roll it into Amarok for distribution. So
that's a skill we will have to develop -- using Git/Gitorious. Reading
through http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Sources/Amarok_Git_Tutorial
, I'm having difficulty conceptualizing exactly what is necessary,
having never used such a version system before.

I'm sure it will become clear as we move into that phase of committing
the Handbook to publication.

However, for now -- we do have a wiki at
http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/User_Guides . Is that available for us to
use to hack up stuff as we think about it? Shall we use Google Docs
instead? We need to have a sandbox somewhere to use for preliminary
thoughts through to finished bits.

First though, we need to outline and plan.

>> I haven't plowed through the entire Google Doc yet, but I'd like to
>> see us put together an outline of what we want, first - and how we
>> want to present the manual.
>>
>> I haven't seen the gitorious version -- is there a way to view that?
>>
>>
>> I've been hanging out in the IRC channel since I got interested in
>> this project, to see what sort of problems our users are encountering,
>> and how best to help them. We've got a lot of good resources already
>> available, and I don't see this Handbook as being an enormous amount
>> of work for any of us, if we first decide what we want, how we want it
>> organized, and presented.
>>
>> I've heard the advice many times, 'measure twice, cut once.' I think
>> we can apply that to our Handbook, and make it the best (and easiest
>> to keep current) in the FLOSS world. :-)
>
> Jep sounds good :)
> I think the best way to get started is making a list of the problems
> people actually have often. IRC, mailinglist and forum should give a
> good overview.
>
>
> Cheers and rock the docs! :D
> Lydia
>
> --
> Lydia Pintscher
> Amarok community manager
> kde.org - amarok.kde.org - kubuntu.org
> claimid.com/nightrose

The problems I'm seeing most often are with iPod/iPhones and other
devices, the dynamic playlist, problems with MySQL(e), scanning, cover
manager, various problems caused by bad tagging or organization such
as all music in one folder (!), and "no sound". Podcasts, streaming
and playlists come in for their share too.

Some of these might be cured automatically in 2.2.2 (fingers crossed!)
But we should start compiling an FAQ, yeah.

Thanks, Lydia,

Valorie
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