KDE 4 Development book

[Kurt Pfeifle]

On Friday 12 November 2004 10:49, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:

> We could just as well polish and extend developer.kde.org a 
> bit.

If done right, a new online KDE development documentation will be a sort 
of "fallout" from the book writing effort. Or maybe even better: the 
other way round (documentation efforts for online access leading to a 
printable book)?

Whatever.... It all goes hand in hand.

* To be successful and useful it requires the support and active input 
  from a representative number of kde-core-developers and people from 
  other KDE-related corners. All further considerations assume that
  there will be enough people to invest some "heart blood", time and
  effort into this.

* It needs to be a "community" project with a small group of trusted
  people in the driver's seat, using CVS/SVN, mailing lists, #irc etc.
  to discuss and create the content, with "maintainers" of individual
  chapters, and subject to an appropriate "Free" license.

* The content created should be useful nearly from "day 1" (where it
  wouldn't yet compile into a book, but at least into a first outline 
  of a chapter (HTML, PDF...) that describes "KIO Slaves", or whatever.

* Having that "book" in a CVS/SVN module "owned" by KDE would make it 
  more easy to have it developed until it is a "complete" book (ideally
  released in parallel to KDE 4.0) and maintained thereafter.

* It should be written with the goal in mind to lower the entry level
  for new KDE developers and for ISVs who are looking at developing
  for the Linux (and *BSD) OS and attract them to develop on and for
  the KDE platform, while at the same time supplying enough for the
  advanced KDE programmers to keep them interested in its maintainance
  and good shape.

---
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this may turn
out to be a very crucial lever to make KDE more attractive for the 
future enterprise desktop markets. 

Current KDE overall is very cleanly designed (you all know the spots 
where it has weaknesses), and has assembled a large community of 
enthusiastic users -- but its documentation doesn't match that level
of quality yet. Let's change it. Let's make it outshine the competition 
on that field too.

Cheers,
Kurt