Gnome documentation used in Ubuntu distributions

[Duncan Lithgow]

On Thu, 2007-06-14 at 23:33 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
> =1=
> 
> We could modify the package which the relevant file is in:
> gnome-user-guide. This is not something that the docteam has ever tried
> before. You can get started by doing "apt-get source gnome-user-guide"
> (which gets you the gnome-user-docs source package) and then you'll need
> to create an Ubuntu-specific patch which is applied to the text.
> 
> I don't know how difficult this will be, because I've never investigated
> whether it is possible to maintain patches on text in packages. We
> should ask one of the Ubuntu developers, or specifically the Ubuntu
> Gnome maintainers, for some guidance, I think.
Although this may sound troublesome, I think there is value in keeping
the two sets of documents as separate as possible. So I would advocate
some kind of 'Dist specific note' which can easily be placed into the
Gnome docs. To clarify, it might read:
"This page describes the default behaviour of the gnome desktop. Ubuntu
has made changes to this default behavior which you can read about on
the <url>Ubuntu's Gnome customisation</>" page.
One reason for me prefering this approach is that I really want Ubuntu
and Gnome to continue reaching agreement instead of diverging.

> =2=
> 
> Instead of directly linking to the Gnome documents as we currently do,
> we could copy them, import them into *our* repository/package, and make
> amendments there. This would require a fair amount of care about keeping
> them up to date, and importing translations, but might be possible.
I would be concerned that this would lead to Ubuntu docs diverging from
Gnome Docs more and more over time. If we have the resources to make
changes we should try and argue for them to be implemented upstream
instead.

Who do we have in Ubuntu who can raise this with the gnome-docs people?

Duncan