KDevelop-Gideon Documentation Writers wanted

Fri Jun 8 01:54:57 UTC 2001

Hiya,

as many of you know, KDevelop is quite popular just because of it's
large amount of documentation that is usally up to date, although the
KDE 2.0 docs could be better but they're a lot of work and KDE 3.0 is
coming ahead. Now, as we're going towards new releases, we're not just
in need to write new code but also to get started with writing new
documentation. 

As KDevelop 3.0 AKA Gideon will be a major rewrite that is not finished
yet on the user interface level, it doesn't make too much sense to get
that started. But we need other docs. Mainly pure good documentation
what automake is and how to add your own check to configure.in.in of a
kdevelop based frame application, what KDE_ICONS = AUTO means. What the
KDE 2 file hierarchy (especially the icon stuff etc) is. What KDE 2.2
uses already for documentation writers - the new libxml2 stuff that
converts xml docs into HTML on the fly and makes it easy to translate
the docs just like application user interfaces. How to use Qt 3.0's
designer correctly (pro's and con's of the internal editor -imagine your
ui file gets destroyed by designer, then all your code is lost so I
would still use inheritance to keep a good oversight).

For all of these questions and a lot more like a *good* learning book
about Qt and KDE programming as well as C and C++ programming *plus* now
resource information and references collections about all these new
programming languages that are supported in gideon. Whoever is
interested in collecting info, writing things down in short howto's or
going for a small book, here's the excerpt of my chat with Lauri Watts
from the doc's team tonight (yes, it *was* 3:30 am :)) to get some
insight where to go first for writing docs. Remember, your english docs
get translated into over 50 languages !  :)  We also urge you to use the
open publication license as is widely used in KDE to protect your
author's rights and still have your docs "Open Sourced" but limits the
publishing in that the author *has to be asked* if someone wants to
publish his docs.

You may contact Lauri by writing to lauri at kde.org.

Please give me an update whether you're interested and what you'd like
to do to get you in contact with people who want to work on the same
subject so you can share work and most importantly, avoid double work :)

Cheers,

Ralf

[03:23:10] <KrazyKiwi> Don't start writing anything without checking
with me first
[03:23:20] <Kand-ALF> k
[03:24:02] <KrazyKiwi> Write in either DocBook XML 4.12, the KDE dtd
from the template in kdebase, or plain ascii... i'll return anything
else because we don't have the resources to deal with it, and it takes
too much time 
[03:24:15] <Kand-ALF> k
[03:24:42] <KrazyKiwi> and don't check in anything to CVS without
running it by a reviewer first, at least until said reviewer gives you
the go ahead to do check ins yourself
[03:25:23] <Kand-ALF> ok
[03:25:40] <KrazyKiwi> we've gone to ENORMOUS lengths to create
consistency across KDE documentation, and so, there are some funky
procedures that you just won't know unless you either ask or I tell you 
[03:26:10] <Kand-ALF> ok
[03:26:20] <KrazyKiwi> which is things like huge amounts of entities,
etc.. two issues there, one is that they are there to make life easier,
the other is that we have legal obligations to acknowledge trademarks,
and we'll save you all the research if you use the entities we already
made :)
[03:26:40] <KrazyKiwi> so, work with us for at least a few chapters,
until you have the hang of it
[03:26:41] <Kand-ALF> ok
[03:27:28] <KrazyKiwi> and, we want to break them up into sub documents,
so you'll likely need my help to sort that out, at least initially (ease
of translation, easy for multiple people to work on one long document)
[03:28:19] <KrazyKiwi> so.. this is not a case of "docs team isn't
letting you do your own thing"... it's just, I have to accomodate legal
stuff, cross-application consistency, and the translation teams, and
still try keep everyone happy :)
[03:28:26] <Kand-ALF> any other important info ?
[03:29:10] <KrazyKiwi> yes, if you ever dare commit anything non-valid,
either coolo or I will hurt you, whichever of us finds it first :)

[03:31:42] <KrazyKiwi> could you note it's 3:25, and I was up all night
with a toddler with a tummy-ache, and I really am quite harmless?
[03:31:54] <Kand-ALF> yes
[03:31:59] <Kand-ALF> I copy that into the mail as well :)

[03:32:47] <KrazyKiwi> oh and docs-english at kde.org for any
questions/problems, and we have a proofreading team in action, who will
help 
with spellchecking/grammar etc if you just ask them  

--
KDE 2 - Trust I seek and I find in You, 
everyday for a something new, 
open mind for a different view, 
and nothing else matters....
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralf Nolden
nolden at kde.org

The K Desktop Environment	The KDevelop Project
http://www.kde.org		http://www.kdevelop.org

-
to unsubscribe from this list send an email to kdevelop-devel-request at kdevelop.org with the following body:
unsubscribe »your-email-address«