Documenting Launchpad for Ubuntu users

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

On Dec 21, 2006, at 6:31 AM, Jonathan Jesse wrote:
> ...
>
>> Matthew Revell wrote:
>> ...
>>> I'm planning a thorough re-write of all the Launchpad docs and have
>>> noticed that Launchpad doesn't make much of an appearance in the 
>>> Ubuntu docs. If I'm missing something, please point me in the right
>>> direction :)
>>
>> I don't think you're missing much. I included a little bit in the 
>> Ubuntu Packaging Guide about bugs, but nothing significant. We had 
>> intended to add a little bit to our "Contributing to Ubuntu" doc, but 
>> to be honest I felt like Launchpad was too much of a moving target to 
>> do very good documentation. Even with the small part about bugs in 
>> the Packaging Guide I've had to update it a few times as LP changes 
>> features or UI.

They're going to continue to change fairly quickly.

> ...
>> Awesome. Launchpad is indeed the most important tool we have in Ubuntu
>> from a developers point of view. In the past I've mentioned 
>> documenting it and was basically told that the UI should be good 
>> enough that it shouldn't need documenting.

Uh oh, that sounds like something I said. :-> I do think that, say, one 
hour spent making Launchpad itself more obvious has about the same 
benefit as five hours spent documenting it on a separate Web site. The 
latter is easier, but the former affects 100% of users instead of just 
those few who read the documentation. (I know the former isn't 
practical if you can't access the code.)

> ...
>>> I think that Ubuntu specific versions of these, along with a general
>>> overview of what Launchpad is and why Ubuntu users might be 
>>> interested in it, would be useful in the web-based documentation and 
>>> perhaps also the in-system help.
> ...
> It would be nice to have this fit into the Topic Based Help spec if we 
> can get it done for Feisty.  I suppose it would be System 
> Documentation so it would fit under this spec?
> ...

I think anything mentioning Launchpad, in the help shipped with Ubuntu, 
would be about one paragraph long or so. More detail would belong on 
the Web site.

Cheers
-- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/