Using userbase for manuals

Chusslove Illich caslav.ilic at gmx.net
Sun Jul 1 20:56:16 BST 2012


> [: Burkhard Lück :]
> That's really crazy [...] similar to Yuri I found it easy to write docbook
> markup.

While to me Docbook is simply less bad than other things, so I use Docbook
when I want to document something about software (if I didn't need HTML
pages, I'd use Latex instead). And when Martin says "we will even have
WYSIWYG editors [for wiki editing]", my skin starts crawling, yet he is
looking forward to it. The point is, different people like different things.

I argue that it is of outer importance that the documentation writer uses
the writing *concept* suitable to own taste (WYSIWYG vs. WYSIWYM, markup
type, etc.), and only within that writing concept, look for particular
formats and workflows.

I further argue that, if people who are accustomed to version control find
web-something-thingy (such as wiki) optimal for their documentation writing
workflow, something has gone horribly wrong; and that efficiency of writing
and maintenance, as well as documentation availability, will suffer because
of it. Instead, they should keep documentation tight to their sources, and
in format which best fits their writing concept. For example, there
certainly exist wiki-like "offline" markups that can be converted to HTML
pages (e.g. Markdown). I think we should encourage people to experiment in
this direction, rather than press "learn Docbook".

-- 
Chusslove Illich (Часлав Илић)
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