[Kdenlive-devel] Kdenlive user manual

[Simon Eugster]

2010/8/25 Dan Dennedy <dan at dennedy.org>:
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:22 AM, Simon Eugster <simon.eu at gmail.com> wrote:
>> To sum up the facts about the user manual. The possibilities we've
>> looked at so far are:
>>
>> = KDE userbase. =
>> Lacks subpages at the moment, seems to provide few features only, but
>> could be used for producing the installed help.
>> However we don't have an installed help anyway at the moment, just a
>> link to the drupal page.
>
> I kinda vote for this, and to request to be added to
> http://kde.org/applications/multimedia/
>
> I think installed help provides polish and mitigates frustration when
> someone is struggling and looks to there for some guidance. Also, this

Imho this is rather a question of whether the documentation is
up-to-date or not. Most users would search for problems online
anyways. But in polish I agree. It would be nice.

> route helps to become a stronger member of the KDE family, and
> hopefully gain more contributors to translations and documentation.
>
> What is meant by sub-pages again? What I see here to me looks like sub-pages:
> http://userbase.kde.org/KWord/1.5/Manual

@Anne, Thanks for your hint. I've been playing around with userbase
this morning, trying to search for nasty limitations I knew from
earlier ;) and checking whether it might be worth a try.
What I've found out that pretty everything I used in wikibooks is
possible in userbase as well now. Custom templates, custom CSS
formatting, image descriptions. So, believe it or not, at the moment
I'd as well vote for userbase.

What makes me worry a little bit is the translations. The czech one is
maybe the most complete, or up-to-date, documentation at the moment.
But Czech cannot be used as master language (raise your hand if you
speak Czech) for the other translations. Using English as master
language (which would make sense because most translators speak it)
would force us to use exactly the same content in other languages as
well, but (as an example) what if someone speaking Czech only wants to
add some great content to the manual?

How do other projects handle that? In my opinion, the translation
system should not force all languages to use the same structure and
content. Unless the master structure is perfect …

>> = Drupal on kdenlive.org =
>> Easy to translate, forces identical structure for all languages.
>> Existing but outdated. English only, as far as I've seen.
>> Overview over chapters perhaps not ideal.
>>
>> = wikibooks.org =
>> Outdated English manual already present. New Czech manual available.
>> de, fr, pt outdated as well. Italian seems more up-to-date.
>> Would perhaps provide a broader user base (since Single Sign-On was
>> introduced for wikimedia projects, and the wikimedia projects are
>> bigger than the kde userbase, so users might rather register here than
>> on userbase).

I found out that it would be possible to export DocBook as well from
wikibooks. But it would require quite some handwork (an existing
plugin I found is alpha only and also exports to an old DocBook
version only). Our coding time might better be spent on kdenlive & Co.

> On the other hand, this is most popular. Whatever the reason, it votes
> for itself in a totally natural manner. Perhaps we can even consider
> the vote already-taken or the developers out-voted if each manual
> counts as 2 votes (due to gravity effect).
>
>> As the 0.7.8 release is near, I'd like us to decide what we're going
>> to use, so we could do that together with the release, making the User
>> manual more public and hopefully gaining some editors. Because we
>> cannot do it all alone ;)

Simon