Writing a Frameworks book at Randa

[Valorie Zimmerman]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 1:26 AM, Aurélien Gâteau <agateau at kde.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 9, 2014, at 6:05, Kevin Funk wrote:
>> On Wednesday 09 April 2014 02:25:18 Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
>> > Hello folks, I know that August is months away, but if you want your
>> > Frameworks book, now is the time to step forward.
>> >
>> > Here are some things to think about:
>> >
>> > Most of this book is already written somewhere. When the words have
>> > already been written down, all we need do is gather and arrange them.
>> > When you think of such an email, dot story, blog post or have eloquent
>> > thoughts in your head, please make a note.
>> >
>> > If you are on this list, you are an expert. You know what the
>> > Frameworks will do for KDE, and you know what they *can* do for
>> > others. Our book will present that case. A good book will help grow
>> > the Frameworks team; I'm sure of it. And a good book will make your
>> > work more widely used. Oh, and you'll be a published author!
>> >
>> > While in Randa, none of us will be writing full-time. In fact, I hope
>> > that *all* of the Frameworks people will stop by the writing room, or
>> > log into Booki and review, add, re-arrange, correct, or make the text
>> > more graceful.
>> >
>> > To make this work a few people must volunteer to take on the writing
>> > of the book as their most important task at Randa. It will be mine,
>> > and our goal is to have a book by the end of the week. We've done it
>> > before, and I know we can do it again. This is a valuable work.
>> >
>> > We need to know the core members of this team, soon. Please step
>> > forward, and also add yourself to the Spints page for planning and
>> > funding.
>> >
>> > Valorie
>>
>> Hey,
>>
>> I'm wondering if we should rather try spending the time in making our KF5
>> apidocs shine. You could spend plenty of time on writing introductory
>> parts
>> for the individual modules, writing tutorials and examples, and make sure
>> they're easy to reach and grasp for newcomers on apidocs.kde.org. This is
>> an
>> integral part for the docs on qt-project.org, too. Just have a look at
>> the
>> first hit for "qt docs": [1]
>
> I agree with this. I think api docs have a higher chance of remaining
> relevant than a book.
>
> Aurélien

There is no denying that apidox are crucially important. And I hope
that some of what we write can contribute to that, perhaps. But I am
in no way qualified to write those, while I am qualified to help this
team write a book. Members of the team spoke up and felt that that was
a useful thing to do.

Obviously the audience we'd write for would be heading for the apidox
once they got interested enough to investigate the frameworks for
their projects. A book can only be introductory, for the reasons you
all have stated.

Valorie
-- 
http://about.me/valoriez