book content in dapper

Mon May 8 12:09:31 UTC 2006

Am Mon, 8. May 2006 12:42 schrieb Matthew East:
> Hi Thomas,
>
> On Mon, 2006-05-08 at 12:05 +0200, email.listen at googlemail.com wrote:
> > Am Mon, 8. May 2006 10:46 schrieb Matthew East:
>
> [...]
>
> > > The difficulty with including this content in the ordinary way (in
> > > Yelp) is that it really comprehensively overlaps with material that
> > > already exists. We're going to cause a lot of confusion if we include
> > > this material in that way because:
> > >
> > >  (a) we have done a lot of work to try and promote the desktop and
> > > server guides in the yelp table of contents and ensure that the user is
> > > not confused by all the overlaps that already exist between our
> > > documentation and the Gnome documentation.
> >
> > IMO, no point for not having the book content.
> > The Book will be for those who like to have a printed version. Yelp is
> > for those who prefer online reading
>
> This slightly misses the point: the proposal is to include both the
> official book and the existing documentation in the distro, and thus "on
> screen". As for printing, html is generally not great for printing. We
> supply PDFs of our guides for printing purposes.
AKK.
Having the book in a on-screen format is a useless overlap or at east a 
irritating redundancy to the yelp based documentation.
I would only see a need for a pdf version in print layout of the ubuntu book.

> > >  (b) the existing documentation is translated, whereas this wouldn't
> > > be.
> >
> > This is the point, the book content _must_ be translated!
> >
> > BTW, you are wrong the desktop guide is _not_ translated (at least not
> > for de_DE)
>
> There's not a lot we can do about that: the German translation has not
> progressed particularly well. However, other languages (8 of them) have
> the guide fully translated [1] and hopefully more will have completed it
> by the deadline. If you want to contribute to the German translation,
> I'm sure that would be much appreciated.
>
> https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+source/ubuntu-docs/+pots/deskt
>opguide
>
> [...]
>
> > > (By the way, and of course speaking merely personally, it is quite
> > > discouraging to have put in loads of work on the Desktop Guide (not to
> > > mention trying to ensure that our guides don't overlap, and that
> > > everything is translated) over this release and then find that
> > > untranslated material written outside the group with basically the same
> > > scope is going to be included as well).
> >
> > I would judge this as a lack of coordination in documentation writing.
> > May be it should be discussed how such redundant work may be avoided in
> > the future. It's ineffective and as you mentioned it may become
> > dismotivating, sometimes.
>
> Well, not really: there are loads of really good reasons that one can
> see for taking the decision to author an official book outside the
> documentation team and I think the team accepted it.
>
> The problem arises when 6 months of effort have been put into producing
> good quality documentation for the distro which doesn't overlap and that
> can be translated: purely from a user experience point of view the
> inclusion of the book alongside the existing material will be a Bad
> Thing, in my opinion. From the point of view of someone who worked on
> getting all those things right (and is quite passionate about them), it
> is discouraging, as I'm sure you'll understand.

If the book will be on the cd as printout layout pdf I wouldn't say that there 
will be a big overlap due to the fact that both documentations targeting 
different types of users and reading preferences.

I agree 100% to your argument that having the yelp based documetation is a 
must. But on the other hand a documentation like the ubuntu book is a strong 
argument for a lot of users.

In my experience especially older users and a lot of novice users cherish an 
old fashioned documentation, a book. So if you have a look to SUSE you will 
hear from a lot of users that the ducumentation shipped with the cd's is a 
strong argument to buy a box. (I would think that a ubuntu book will come 
along with an install cd.) 
Regarding the ways ubuntu is spreaded, mostly per download or shipit, I would 
say that having the book on the cds is a good compromise. 

What I would like to see in the long run is some kind of print on demand offer 
for a modular documentation which helds the book plus material for a 
selfstudy / for courses. You may know that in so called developing countries 
paper based documentation is still favorized. I know people in the magreb who 
started computing without having access to a computer only by using books.
So having the book on the cd or having a printout with a cd might be a first 
step in this direction.

But I also see that the tools used for documentation now are only suboptimal. 
Wikis tend to become chaotic over the time and Programm documentation doesn't 
make it into the printouts.
May be a system like ILIAS [1] is a better tool for a more coordinated 
documentation development. It might be usefull to offer course material for a 
later ubuntu certification too. 
I would bet the ILIAS people will be glad to give a helping hand for a more 
complex/extensive ubuntu dokumentation.

reards,
thomas

[1] http://www.ilias.de/
Matthias Kunkel
project coordinator
+49 (0)221 940 2565 
m.kunkel at uni-koeln.de 