Nutshells, books and FAQs

[John Hornbeck]

On Sat, 2004-11-20 at 14:03 +0100, Christoph Haas wrote:
> Hi, friends and foes...
> 
> Looks like we get ourselves organised well now. But there's one issue
> left I wonder about. We are currently working on the FAQ where we put
> topics from the Wiki in. Then other people (I just know of John) are
> thinking about the "Ubuntu in a nutshell" which is sometimes referenced
> as the "Ubuntu Book". What now?

I was actually told that the book I was working on, would not work as
the nutshell book. But that what myself and RobertJ are working on is
needed.
> 
> I have just looked at what documentation Debian provides. And besides
> the huge Debian Reference and the Debian Policy there is a number of
> documents that all deal with non-development topics. I could imagine we
> put all our effort together into a single document. Reading through our
> current FAQ (besides that it needs some style review) it seems like all
> the subjects could as well fit into "The Book". Look at the User's Guide
> Debian has taken from Progeny.
> 
I have honestly thought of porting the entire Progeny Guide over to
Ubuntu.  It is a very good manual.

> Perhaps other people are already clear about the direction we are
> heading. But I'm still confused. And putting together such a large
> document is a lot of work. I would really like to avoid double-work and
> make sure everybody knows what should get in there.
> 
I get more and more confused everyday.  I think that I should be working
on the book, but also trying to help maintain the faq, gnome-guide,
wiki, and in the end I don't get much done because I am stretching
myself to thin.  I think avoiding double-work is a great idea, and in
the original idea for the book, I was going to mainly take other bits
and pieces and tie them together from the wiki and debian docs and such
so that it would incorporate all the docs already there.

> So my suggestion: can't we abandon the FAQ and change the
> "question/answer" style to regular sections within the <book>?
> That way we had a single document with everything in it. It could be
> used as an FAQ or just be read sequentially as a book.
> 
I think we can combine it all without any problem.  It would be a good
thing also so that we can make sure everyone is on board with the whole
idea and not just a few of us deciding what will go into it.

> I know there is a bounty on the "nutshell" task. Honestly I'm not
> interested in bounties. So this is not meant to take any money away.
> I just fear that we will change our minds once the book gets started.
> 
I am interested in the bounties simply because I am poor :-), but I have
no problem working without them.

> Just tell me I'm writing complete rubbish. Otherwise this is how we
> could get started:
> 
It is no where near rubbish.

> - Consensus on the structure
> - Distribute chapters/sections across volunteers (least interference)
> - Put the current Q/A into an "old" chapter
> - Everybody gets the current Q/A out and moves them to their chapters
> 

> I admit that this would probably be even more work than just Q/A. And we
> certainly do not need to explain the basic things time and again -
> pointers/links should be sufficient. But I would feel more motivated to
> write more complete and precise articles instead of just collecting bits
> and pieces.
> 
> And I would really like to have Matt Kirchhoff involved in this because
> we really need someone to watch the work from the above.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Cheers
>  Christoph
> -- 

A few last notes.  

As of right now, I have only had about one person step up to help with
this book, in the beginning people where saying I was wrong because I
wanted to do it myself, so I took everyone's advice and opened it up for
others to help me.  Now noone has really put anything in.  I have no
problem with this, but if this will be changed into a community mainly
project it still needs to follow along the structure that is mainly
there.  We worked for quite a while to get the framework and such to
where it is and I think it is very nice.  I don't want to start from
scratch and I don't think we have the time.

On the time note.  This is something that is supposed to be ready for
Hoary.  If we start trying to redesign stuff now, we will never make it
and also we will look foolish because we are a doc team that would
provide basicly nothing for a release.

Last note.  Combining effort into this is a great idea, but we need not
forget the other docs that are needing to be done.  Such as "man pages",
"gnome-docs", misc docs just laying around that could use some love, I
know some people where saying Nautilus docs could really use some love.
If we do this than it needs to be decided soon, because if we sit around
and discuss it for a week, that is one more week where nothing is
getting done.



John Hornbeck   
http://opensoftdesign.org
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