[gNewSense-users] Re: gNewSense Documentation

[Mark William Darbyshire]

Hello Don and the gNS list,

I haven't really done all that much for the documentation so far. This
is partly because I'm rather busy at school (I'm in my last year at high
school, with my final exams coming up) and partly because I'm rather
lazy. I intend to contribute more heavily after my exams.

I think it is important to have the documentation structure worked out
before we start writing the documentation itself; existing documentation
is rather incoherent and unstructured, and this can be avoided by
planning how to structure and integrate the documentation before it's
written. This will also make it easier to coordinate, because we'll be
able to allocate people certain pieces of documentation to write.

When I first "took charge" of the documentation I made a contents page
at http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Documentation/ and that is the only
structure I've planned so far. I haven't really done anything since
then. The structure certainly needs some improvements, or a complete
rewrite.

A bit of discussion on how to structure the initial documentation, and
what topics to have, is therefore needed. Please share any suggestions
you may have. Then I'll be able to put together a final documentation
outline. Once this general plan has been worked out people wanting to
help will be able to put their names by the sections they'd like to
write and then start writing.

I've made a page at
http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Documentation/ProposedStructure which can be
used to show the work-in-progress structure. I suppose a traditional
contents type structure with sections and subsections would be better
than the table structure currently in use.

It would be a good idea to have an "Overall Documentation Deputy" listed
at http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Main/CurrentProjects so if anyone (such as
Don) is interested, feel free to volunteer!

Please share any advice or better ideas you have!

Regards,
Mark.

On Mon, 2007-11-12 at 19:39 -0500, Don Parris wrote:
> Hi Mark,
> 
> I'm Don Parris, the publisher of Blue GNU.  I saw your name as heading
> up the documentation project for gNewSense, and thought I would drop
> you a line to find out where you stand on that.  I'm interested in
> contributing.  I'm not sure how involved you are at present, and
> wanted to know what's happening, or at least where you last stood when
> working on it. 
> 
> Kind regards,
> Don
> -- 
> D.C. Parris
> Minister, Journalist, Free Software Advocate
> https://www.xing.com/profile/Don_Parris
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/dcparris