About Writing Documentation in KDE

[Anne Wilson]

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On 02/07/12 11:56, Yuri Chornoivan wrote:
> Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:00:05 +0300 було написано Anne Wilson 
> <annew at kde.org>:
> 
> The better availability, fast editing capabilities, good 
> translation support of current UserBase have not produce many high 
> quality handbooks yet. Some sort of recipes, good tutorials, but 
> there are only a few handbooks... All converted docbooks have
> links to corresponding UserBase pages, so there is nothing to
> prevent users from fixing them.
> 
> Hence, we have to admit that the main problem is the lack of KDE 
> documenters themselves, not the format or the place where the docs
>  are stored.
> 
Totally agreed.  In the past many people told us that docbook was the
main reason they didn't write manuals.  Having provided an alternative
we find that still many people don't write it.

Recently it has been said that, when tried, the UserBase method is
found to be easier, but it's not well-known, so many don't try it.
The only answer to that, that I can see, is to talk about it here and
elsewhere :-)

> Now, we can live with both systems. If developers want their 
> documentation to be based on UserBase pages, it's OK. If they want
>  to have tutorials (videos, screencastings) on UserBase, it's OK 
> too. Do not want to have UserBase handbook? Even this is OK. ;)
> 
Again, I agree.  In fact the decision is likely to be dictated by the
potential user-base of the application in question.  What I do want to
see, though, is cross-linking between different sources of help.

<snip>
> 
> And as a final note, some KDE application have copyrights of 2005 
> year and that does not prevent them to work properly (as in 2005) 
> if they were written by talented KDE developers. ;)
> 
I quoted the 2005 date as an example of the fact that few applications
are still in a KDE 3 incarnation, and it's hard to believe that the
change to KDE 4 brought no change to the application :-)  I won't
waste my time or yours checking for individual examples - the
principle is what matters in this discussion.

Anne
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