[KPhotoAlbum] KPA manual

[Joe]

Thank you so much for starting this.

I just found out (from this list) that a pdf version was available.
I downloaded it, printed it, and started reading it and making written 
notes of things that could use improvement - mostly grammatical things 
to start with. I've already found a few features I didn't know were there!

I've been using KPhotoAlbum at a basic level for several years, so I am 
familiar with the main features and I do have a large (25k+ and growing) 
collection of photos and a few video clips which I am managing for my 
partner.

What I'd like to do is get drafts of new documentation and edit them for 
grammar and clarity. Since I don't know the code at all and am far from 
an expert user, my perspective should be useful - especially since most 
of the sections will probably be originally written by people with 
extensive technical knowledge of the project who are very "close" to it.

To help this way, I would need to establish a revision work flow with 
anyone who wants me to edit their work.

Currently, I know a little bit about HTML, less about XML, and nothing 
about docbook or pdf formats. I am starting to learn wiki markup for 
another project. I have used very primitive RCS systems in the past, but 
do not know anything about git yet. I do know a lot about English and i 
do have a professional programming background.

Since most of what I would be doing, at least initially, would be 
content oriented (as opposed to layout, etc.), it would probably be easy 
enough to edit structured files (whatever docbook looks like), or plain 
text. Plain text would be easier for me, but then someone else would 
have to patch my revisions into the real documents - possibly an 
unnecessary step.

I had a quick look at docbook.org and there seems to be quite a lot to 
it. I also glanced at Serna Free - Open Source XML Editor. Maybe 
something like that would be easy enough for me to learn quickly given 
that my immediate needs are rather minimal.

The remaining issues would be how the work would get to me, where I 
would deliver it, and how decisions would be made about proposed changes 
to the content.

Hopefully, there will be some sort of area for working documents where 
changes could be installed and reviewed by a few people before everybody 
else gets to see obvious mistakes and typos, etc.

In the last few months, I've been doing some editing for another project 
collaborating with the documents' author. Other than that, I haven't 
done a lot of work where two or more people were contributing to the 
same elements at the same time, so this will be a learning process for me.

I don't have unlimited free time, but I'd definitely like to help.

Joe

On 02/12/2012 06:06 AM, Miika Turkia wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I have started to update the KPhotoAlbum's user manual. The manual can
> be accessed as online help or khelpcenter "page" and should become
> available in the docs.kde.org as HTML and PDF once it is acceptable.
> How to see my current changes is described below.
>
> This job is going to need quite a bit of help from others. For
> starters all the screenshots need to be re-newed with a recent version
> of KPA and KDE. I suggest that someone who is using KDE based system
> will do the screenshots so the look would be correct. (I use Gnome on
> Ubuntu.) Also the texts should be revised. If someone is willing to
> write some sections that would be great, plain text is sufficient if
> docbook format is alien to you.
>
> So far I have not made any commits on the documents but the current
> slightly updated version is viewable as HTML on
> http://www.vaarin.kalsarit.net/KPA/manual/ch01.html . Main changes so
> far are:
> - The Viewer - additions to the end -
> http://www.vaarin.kalsarit.net/KPA/manual/ch05.html
> - Generating HTML - tiny additions -
> http://www.vaarin.kalsarit.net/KPA/manual/ch07.html
> - Configuring KPhotoAlbum - additions to the beginning -
> http://www.vaarin.kalsarit.net/KPA/manual/ch10.html
>
> I am sure there are a lot of errors and outdated instructions that
> should be corrected at least in the other parts of the document. Also
> a lot of functionality is missing. However, documenting every single
> detail of KPA is not the point of this documentation. I think this
> should be good enough intro so people can use KPA effectively.
>
> Sample workflows might be useful to be added at the end. E.g. I shoot
> RAW, review and tag images on KPA, send selected images for
> development on Bibble/AfterShot and generate jpegs to the Picture
> hierarchy. Once this is done I check through the images and make final
> selection before exporting to static HTML pages for the boredom of my
> friends and colleagues.
>
> So would this kind of section be useful with two or three different
> work-flows described? Volunteers to write about their work-flow?
> Anyone willing to reserve specific sections for writing/updating? Screenshots?
>
> miika
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