[kde-doc-english] Re: trival tasks

[Raphael Langerhorst]

Hi Gerry!

Nice to hear from you :) and sorry for misunderstanding your initial 
post. More comments below...

On Tuesday 01 February 2005 16:34, Martin Ellis wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Monday 17 Jan 2005 20:12, Gerry Gavigan <gg at gerryg.uklinux.net>
>
> wrote:
> > > > I just saw the call on kde.org for people to do some grunt
> > > > work - happy to be given some of that work.  Don't know how
> > > > to start - don't want to be "high maintenance"
>
> On Monday 31 Jan 2005 19:49, you wrote:
> > The web site request and the response I got were slightly further
> > apart than I was expecting.  IIRC the website request was for
> > spell checking, proof reading, bit of doc writing.  So I
> > volunteered. The response pointed me to junior tasks - which were
> > software oriented.  I haven't written software for years, have no
> > Java or C++ (think Algol 68, Pascal, Ada at a pinch - or machine
> > code for industrial processes) didn't really understand the tasks
> > so I sloped off.
>
> OK, I see the confusion now.  Raphael's article was asking for
> software developers *and* documention developers.
>
> I guess when Nicolas pointed you at the junior jobs, he assumed you
> were interested in programming.  Not important.

I guess that happened, but maybe we should add junior jobs about 
documentation to that page as well... there are certainly some.

>
> > I'm still happy to contribute the boring doc stuff, proof read,
> > adjust the register and perspective of the English for the reader
> > rather than the writer (and did for one project) its what I do
> > these days.
>
> Great.  That would be much better than having manuals that were
> written "because we should have one."

I think this is a great offer from you. KOffice has some outdated 
information that needs to be looked through and compared to the 
current state of the application.

>
> From
> http://webcvs.kde.org/koffice/doc/README.documentation?rev=1.11&vie
>w=auto it looks as though there's plenty of scope for help.

Martin already pointed you to the correct file, as you can see, there 
are many blank spots. I have cleaned this file up to include only the 
people that are _really_ working on the documentation, so there are 
no dead entries.

>
> I've CC'd Raphael because he knows more about the state of
> documentation than I do - perhaps he could suggest if there's
> anything that should have priority.

Gerry, you can just take any of the applications that are currently 
unmaintained from the list in README.documentation and look through 
the docs and compare with the current state of the application.

If it's easily possible for you to keep up with latest CVS version of 
KOffice for looking though the documentation that would be great. 
KOffice 1.3 has been branched about a year ago, things could have 
changed (and certainly did).

Please do NOT start with KPlato, Kexi or Krita WITHOUT asking the 
developers of these applications first (look at the homepage for the 
devs to contact).

There are also documentation bugs filed against some applications - 
just run KBugBuster and choose "doc", you get a list of 
documentation, maybe you find some that relate to KOffice.

In ANY case you should register with the kde-i18n-doc and 
kde-doc-english mailing lists if you write documentation. Lauri and 
Philip are managing these mailing lists and can give you lot's of 
support for writing documentation. Even KOffice documentation is 
primarily discussed on the doc lists, not much on the koffice-devel 
list itself.

>
> I remember the guys doing KPlato and Krita said it might be a bit
> early to start doing documentation.  Apparently there was a start
> of some Kexi documentation, but, if it existed, it seems to have
> disappeared (at least, it doesn't seem to have made it into CVS).
> Raphael - seen it?

See above.

>
> It's seems quite acceptable in KDE to put a even just a structure
> of a manual into CVS even if it's just got notes about what should
> go where (I've seen this before) - perhaps you might tackle a
> structure for a Kexi manual?  If we put such a thing in CVS we
> wouldn't have to worry about it disappearing, and we could fill it
> out as the application develops.

Yes, that's probably fine for missing documentation. But check back 
with the developers of these applications.

>
> Just some ideas - if you want to talk about a Kexi manual, I can
> give you a hand.  If can Raphael suggest something you'd find more
> interesting, that's also cool.

If Kexi is ready for a manual that would be a possibility (see above 
x2)

>
> Finally, it would be good if you could give us some idea of your
> technical skills - e.g. if you can use CVS and/or Docbook.
> If not, don't worry, text in an email will be fine.

Would be good. If you don't know how to download the CVS sourcecode, 
look at the koffice-devel mailing list archives, there was recently a 
post about it. If you can't find it, just let us know, we can help 
you.

>
> Cheers
> Martin

Thanks a LOT for your offer to help, please feel free to ask more if 
there are still open questions.

Regards,
Raphael