about Fundamental issues

[J.D. Ray]

---- Original Message ----
From: lists at tomchance.org.uk
To: kde-quality at kde.org
Subject: Re: about Fundamental issues
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 12:30:51 +0100

>On Tuesday 20 Apr 2004 09:02, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>><snip>
>Why not set-up a documentation wiki, run on the software that
wikipedia uses, and put all the documentation into that?

Of course, I'm very new to this team, and might be talking out of
turn here, but I'm in favor of a wiki-type documentation editing
scheme.  With it, I could log in from anywhere (work on my lunch
break, etc.) and find documents to review and make changes to.  One
problem is that processes need to be in place for editors to accept
or reject changes before they're posted as "the latest revision." 
But those processes should be in place now with the DocBook format,
so the change should be minor.  Another problem is that wiki systems
tend to create text-only documents and not rich content.

The great promise of a content management system (CMS) is that it
allows writers to create content for the web without worrying about
the HTML underlying it.  I believe that most CMS applications have
prescribed templates for putting content in, limiting the writer to
plain text that the server marks up itself.  But the reason DocBook
is being used for documentation in the KDE project is that it
provides rich content while transcending web delivery, allowing for
creation of content in a wide variety of formats including LaTeX,
PDF, plain text and proprietary formats like MS Word, right?  

So, the trouble is finding some sort of easy-to-use editor (dare I
say WYSIWYG??) that runs on a web page and produces good DocBook
output.  I did a look and found this
(http://freshmeat.net/projects/c-arbre/), though the demo site is
only in French, which I don't read, and so I can't say if it does
what the description says.  The same search turned up Jaxe
(http://freshmeat.net/projects/jaxe/), though it's unclear whether or
not it can be hosted as a web app.

Again, I apologize if I'm leaping to the fore and not observing good
protocol.  I will say that as a new person coming on, trying to
understand how this whole thing works, I am somewhat overwhelmed with
the idea of establishing a local CVS mirror (something I've never
done), learning to use emacs (something I've avoided), and learning
DocBook markup (a new twist on XML for me), just to be able to
contribute some time to writing or editing documentation for
something that I'm also not used to using (KDE).  For other people
coming on new, as well as for myself, I encourage you to "grease the
skids" a little and make contributing to this project easy.

Thanks for listening.

J.D.