'How To'

[Matthew East]

Hi Phill,

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Phill Whiteside <phillw at uk.vpolink.com> wrote:
> Hiyas,
> as a n00b at this, I've now gotten completely confused over what programmes
> i need to view / edit etc.
> e.g. Is yelp(v.2) going to replaced by yelp(v.3); Do i need it ?

yelp is the program that we use in Ubuntu for viewing desktop help -
all you need is the version of yelp which is on your Ubuntu system
(which will be version 2.30 if you use Lucid).

> One common theme I read is that the information is scattered quite far and
> wide, that it is there I do not doubt.
> Would it be possible for a doc to be made a 'one stop shop' of what is
> recommended

Perhaps you could have a look at this document which is a "quickguide"
to contributing to system documentation:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/SystemDocumentation?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=BugsPlaybook.pdf

After that you should find that things are not as complicated as they
might seem. You'll find plenty of other information on working on the
system documentation here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/SystemDocumentation

> If I'm going to be using XML (which apparently I must do), there is a
> problem that if I look at wiki pages, they use a completely different format

That's correct - the wiki is separate to the system documentation and
uses a very simple markup format which is not xml. Have a look at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WikiGuide for information about how
to contribute to the wiki.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask again if you hit any issues.

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