Recent changes to Ubuntu

[Sean Wheller]

For those comming in early to this thread please see 
http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2005-April/001857.html
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My feeling is that we have to take the severity of the change into account. 
GUI changes will have a heavy impact on documents in the areas of screen 
captures and desktop menu systems.

Regarding the two issues at hand. The Ubuntu theme change really does not 
bother much. The main screens of the applications are the same. For the 
spatial change I think it would have been nice to have it in the release 
notes. No use crying over spilt milk.

Both these issues are not major, but do indicate that communication and 
workflow are not as tight as they should be. The results could have been much 
worse, so we do need to avoid this type of problem if we can.

In building the Docbook XML framework I have incorporated some features that 
enable us to quickly adjust ourselves to such circumstances, provided that we 
have warning. The first is that all menus are external entities and the 
second is that images are saved in one place. A single update to either of 
these central locations will update all documents providing that the authors 
use them.

What we need then is that developers keep us posted on GUI changes. Matt I 
think you are the best person to update us with regard to 'sweeping' changes 
such as a change in the desktop menu system or theme change. For individual 
documents it should be the developers responsability to update the authors 
who maintain the document.

So, when making changes people in devel should be thinking, "Does this change 
impact documentation?" If yes then contact docteam or authors, if no then do 
nothing.

On our part we also need to be more vigilant. I highly recommend that all 
authors document against development and not the preview releases. Post Hoary 
this means updating your apt sources, doing regular reloads of the sources 
lists and performing upgrades as the come in. For next version this means 
that the authors platform may become unstable. I normally do this work on a 
lab machine. Not everybody has this luxury, so if anyone has suggestions on 
how to do this, please speak now.

For menu changes I will try to script so that menus are generated and updated 
from /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu . I believe this is a Free Desktop 
Standard, so it applies to both GNOME and KDE, which makes life a little 
easier. Hopefully, this will eliminate the need to be continuosly updated 
with regard to changes in the desktop menu system. If I get it right, then I 
will make the doc team aware of desktop menu changes via of the commits being 
auto sent to our commit list and to the user list. Again, the benefit will 
also mean that we are made aware of addition, subtraction or relocation of 
applications that are part of the desktop menu system. 

In general, devel should just be sensitive to the fact that we also have i18n 
stuff in our build system. So a single menu change could result in many 
smaller updates trickling through the ecosystem. On the side of caution, it 
is best to give early warning especially near preview and final releases.

-- 
Sean Wheller
Technical Author
sean at inwords.co.za
http://www.inwords.co.za
Registered Linux User #375355
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