Gnome documentation used in Ubuntu distributions

[Matthew East]

Hi,

* Duncan Lithgow:
> On 19/06/07, Jim Kissel <jlk at osml.eu> wrote:
>> My concern is the Ubuntu specific gnome desktop is diverging from the
>> "Gnome Desktop" and the documentation isn't keeping pace.  I already
>> have a number of changes I need/want to make.  These are minor changes,
>> but will trip up the novice.
>>
>> The question that needs to be answered is, "Will the Ubuntu gnome
>> desktop continue to diverge from the "Gnome desktop"?
>>
>> If the answer is YES it will continue to diverge, then IMOSHO the
>> documentation team needs to maintain a separate tree.
> I hope that the close cooperation with Gnome will mean that divergence
> continues to be minimal. If divergence grows then of course at some
> time a seperate tree will be needed.

I think that Ubuntu will generally continue to make changes to the
default Gnome setup, there is nothing wrong with that. In terms of how
to document it, I think it's probably more elegant to actually make
changes to the Gnome documentation in one of the two ways I set out in
my original post, rather than using Duncan's (admittedly very clever)
idea of flagging the difference up to the user. Most users don't care or
want to know what the difference between Gnome upstream and the Ubuntu
desktop is, and I think that we are looking particularly at these types
of users here.

If we have people who are keen to work on fixing these changes (as it
sounds like Jim is), then we should try and fix them. I'm still not sure
whether solution 1 or solution 2 is more effective - the latter is
easier in the short term, whereas the former is potentially cleaner and
more maintainable in the long term.

I think we need some more input on the question, so we should raise it
on the Gnome documentation list, and possibly with the Ubuntu Gnome
maintainers too.

Matt
-- 
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

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