Server Guide HTML

[Phil Bull]

Hi Matt,

On Wed, 2010-08-18 at 09:04 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
> I agree in principle with having just one document which covers these
> matters and I think that there will certainly be useful material in
> the add-applications document which could be incorporated into the
> software-center manual. However it might well cover slightly
> extraneous topics such as how Ubuntu software works, how to install a
> *deb file, and so on.
> 
> This raises questions about how we handle documents which are included
> in other packages than ubuntu-docs. First, when a question arises
> about what the scope of a particular document would be, are the
> developers of that package happy to defer to the ubuntu-doc team? Will
> they promptly and happily merge branches/patches from us?
> 
> Second, how can we efficiently handle the fact that other important
> documents are in different sources to the core bzr branch that we
> focus on. What I'd like to see is a plan about how we as a team can
> efficiently keep track of the different documents that we are
> interested in, and can draw them together when we publish material to
> help.ubuntu.com. Taking software-center as an example, there is a
> clear need to publish this manual on help.ubuntu.com or elsewhere
> online [1], but it is quite cumbersome to have to bring together many
> different packages and publish them on help.ubuntu.com without a
> wholesale change to our publishing processes. Having said that,
> library.gnome.org manages this issue quite well, so I'm sure we can
> learn from them and improve our processes.

I've thought about this a little, and the issue I'm struggling with is:
What is the scope of ubuntu-docs? What should the system docs be
covering, and what should individual application manuals be covering?

I don't think we can make any sensible decisions about how to organise
material until we have a solid answer to this question. Any ideas? What
do users expect to see in the system docs?

Thanks,

Phil

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/~philbull
Book - http://nostarch.com/ubuntu4.htm