Using userbase for manuals

[Aurélien Gâteau]

Le mardi 3 juillet 2012 18:24:41 Ingo Malchow a écrit :
> In an ideal world we could really work around such issues with some
> semi-automated ways.
> Just an idea:
> Those who do like the idea of doing a manual in a online wiki could
> just teach their respective users how to properly format their manual.
> This reduces the overhead on developers, but also improves the
> integration of user contribution.
> Once a release is about to happen the page can be closed (protected
> from further editing) and exported to docbook and put into some
> git/svn repo. This needs some adjustments on the docbook export, but
> those are technical details, so i skip that here.
> At the same time our group leaders for languages can be poked to
> review their translations on the current state of it. Which is AFAIR
> the workflow on the offline translations as well.
> Now you can easily translate on- or offline in the usual way and it
> can finally be merged in the final manual release.
> 
> As sidenote for those without internet, we can also produce a pdf at
> release dates, not sure everybody is aware of that.

I like your idea: it let users collaboratively write documentation on the 
wiki, while still making it possible to produce formal offline-usable manual at 
release time.

The only thing which worries me is updates of stable versions of the manual: 
is it possible to maintain "stable" and "master" versions of the documentation 
in the wiki?

Aurélien