Kubuntu Docs Checkup

[Xen]

I just want to say that:

(I don't have really time to proofread now..):

- the graphics / layout of the thing are very nice. Perhaps that is  
just as part of that KDE knowledge base, but it is still a bliss to  
look at (much like the rest of 'plasma').

- this documentation is so bare that you might wonder if anyone who is  
interested enough to find a different version of Ubuntu would be prone  
to make use of that knowledge if it is so ...rudimentary in the sense  
of being completely obvious to anyone visiting it.

It feels really wonderful but... I guess back in the day I was working  
on some documentation for e.g. openSuSE... if this is to be Kubuntu's  
wiki (is it?) it is 'rife' to be something more, it seriously needs to  
be a thing that in the first place invites 'random' or even 'spurious'  
collaboration, a messy knowledge base that users are invited to to  
contribute stuff to. You won't get very far with something very shiny  
(and very tailored, but nothing else) because there is just not enough  
input and you can't do that thing on your own, it has to happen  
'haphazardly'. In a sense you need a real wiki, but without abandoning  
what you have now, because it is so polished it might start to shine  
in my head the moment I go down under and fall asleep... something  
like that, it is nice.

The fonts are nice, the sizes, the dimenions of everything, just the  
only thing that makes it less so, the only thing that ruins that sort  
of in a small but signicant way is the "languages" selelection thing  
at the top --... if anything such a control should not be that  
prominent, maybe situated on the right (at the same height) but not  
nearly as big either. You could imagine a kind of vertical  
nearly-square control but you'd have to design the rest of the layout  
around that as well. ...It does nicely break the header  
("Documentation for Kubuntu", etc..) from the rest of the page, from  
the top.
... But a language control is not something you need to keep seeing  
constantly. Back when I had a reasonable website (it was just a  
WordPress thing) there was this WPML "multi language" plugin that was  
still free back then. It allowed a dropdown list of sorts, for  
instance. You could get flags positioned in a correct way (for visual  
congruency) displaying the various versions available for that page.  
The site is defunct now (it seems the WPML thing I have turned off???   
otherwise I'd show it, it is at http://1st.xenhideout.nl/ but the  
language controls are gone and something else doesn't work either (it  
doesn't even display the second language pages anymore)) (Oh wait, it  
doesn't display any page except the special category listings :p) but  
you catch my drift.

WHEN you get more languages (more translations/localisations) this  
language widget will prove to be unworkable anyway.

Anyway, that is just my ...gist of the moment. I hope you enjoy the  
writing but actually I hope it makes sense what I say and perhaps  
it'll be of some use.

So in essence what I am saying is that I think the larger design  
choices (where to position a wiki, do we allow real user  
collaboration) is a bit more important than whether or not there are  
no spelling mistakes in the current text. Let me just say that I once  
spent really large amounts of time perfecting a certain presentation  
and in the end the presentation itself was badly chosen. And we had to  
abandon the whole thing and redo it much faster and it was even better  
than what we had before. Anyway.

Looks very good though.

Bart.


Quoting Aaron Honeycutt <aaronhoneycutt at outlook.com>:

> Hey all I'm here asking everyone to check for errors and typos!   
> https://userbase.kde.org/Kubuntu