[kde-quality] Re: Janitor Jobs/Documentation Coordinator

[Carlos Leonhard Woelz]

On Tuesday 24 February 2004 09:03, Jörg Bayer wrote:
>
> As my decision was quite spontaneous I'm not very familiar with the actual
> status of documentation. So let me tell what I thought might be to do for
> me
>
> - First I subscribed to the mailing list (and find myself "reproducible"
> confrontated with a mailman bug when trying to log into my new account)
>
> - I want to get to know actual doc writers and inform me about current
> status of documentation and who is "motor" of all the work until now

OK, I will try to update this info.
Kmail has active documenter working on it. Korganizer seems behind. You can 
check on the documentation last update by searching the kde-cvs archives.

For instance try searching for korganizer doc at:

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-cvs&r=1&b=200402&w=2

> - Read actual documentation delivered with the program versions I'm
> currently using :-)

This is indeed a great start :)

> <insert>
> ##############
> FYI: I am actually using  SuSE 8.2 with KDE 3.2.0 (I18N-de) on a
> "production system" (real data in KMail, KOrganizer etc.)  - Hardware
> Pentium II / 350 MHz, 512 MB. The packages are the binary version provided
> by SuSE. While upgrading KDE from 3.1 to 3.2 not all packages have been
> updated correctly but I think that the ones corresponding to any
> PIM-project are valid.
>
> So at the time I am using regular user versions of
> KMail,
> KAdressBook,
> KAlarm,
> KNotes,
> KOrganizer
> Kontact (runs slowly so I normally use all the programs for their own)
>
> For near future I plan to keep using this "user versions" to get the "end
> user feeling" for the programs, but if it is necessary to run actual CVS
> versions I will organize a second computer as testing environment.
> ##################
> </insert>

I will give you an update why building the unstable version of KDE PIM is 
strongly recommended.

KDE is translated to many languages (86 the last time I saw it). This is a 
giant effort, as you can imagine. To allow translators to do their tasks, a 
"strings freeze" is required, in order to stabilize the text they are going 
to translate. In other words, at some point of development, no new text is 
allowed in KDE.

This means that documentation must be prepared in advance if you want to cover 
the new dialogs and features. The only way to produce documentation covering 
the last features that will ship with KDE PIM 3.3 is to follow the 
development version.

But by all means, don't get me wrong, this does not mean you can't improve 
greatly the existing documentation by using KDE 3.2 release. One step at a 
time, there is so much to learn! KOrganizer can get many improvements by 
updating its docs to KDE 3.2.

Checkout the kdepim module. For info on how to do this, check:

www.kde.org/areas/develop/cvsguide/managestep.php

Under the docs/korganizer folder you can find the index.docbook. This is the 
main KOrganizer help file.

More on the docbook format in the documentation howto.

> - Get in contact with developers/testers for upcoming features

I guess the way to do this is to build KDE. If you decide to postpone this, it 
is OK. There is much to do already, and you can focus on the 3.2 applications 
and improving the existing docs. But if you want to cover the new features, 
the way to go is to build KDE PIM unstable instead to see the new features 
for yourself.

> BTW: I prepared a new mail account for this project for me. So please use
> DocCor at qna.de for future communication, or is it possible to get an alias
> @KDE.org for this?

The kde.org address is reserved for people with:

1) Outstending past contributions
2) Are judged to use their @kde.org mail address wisely. (After all, it is one 
of the few things that mark you a "KDE Representative".

For the other contributors, there is the kdemail.net address:

http://www.kdemail.net

BTW: you don't _need_ to do all this stuff. Do if it pleases you. Learning 
docbook, compiling KDE CVS, managing CVS working folders is fun to me, but I 
can't say the same for all people ;)

If you use KDE 3.2 and update the documentation based on it, send me the 
changes in plain text and I will add them myself. Just for your information, 
I am not a coder myself, so we are both in the same boat.

Cheers,

Carlos Woelz
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