Direction of the Ubuntu system docs

[Jonathan Jesse]

Why shouldn't the docs represent the default setup of Ubuntu (which in this
case would be Unity)?  What do the other distros (Fedora, OpenSUSE, etc)
create and ship?  At one point the documentation was supposed to be an
offline way for users to figure out how to do things.  If I can't connect to
the internet how can I figure out how to do X?  For kubuntu-docs we are
trying to document the system to help users out w/ links if possible to the
correct kde-docs.

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:07 AM, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> Hi Phil,
>
> On 19 December 2010 22:06, Phil Bull <philbull at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In light of this, I think it's time we discussed the direction of the
> > Ubuntu system docs. The package is becoming outdated - we've mostly been
> > in maintenance mode for the last few release cycles, and even that's
> > only due to the hard work and dedication of a couple of people. There
> > are a number of changes in Ubuntu and related projects that we're going
> > to have to adapt to and make some decisions about if we're to stay
> > relevant:
>
> I have to say that I can't really think of a good solution in order to
> make ubuntu-docs relevant again. The options seem to be:
>
> 1. continue with the ubuntu-docs package, but rewrite the documents so
> that they match Ubuntu's default desktop setup, with Unity.
> 2. seek to come closer to Gnome by shipping a modified gnome-user-docs
> package with documents added and amendments to the default documents
> to reflect maintained by us in Mallard.
> 3. work on documentation to be shipped directly in the unity packages.
>
> I agree with you on copyright assignment and am not prepared,
> certainly without better justification, to sign the contributor
> agreement. I've expressed my thoughts on it [1] and didn't get a
> satisfactory answer. However Mark has said that he will blog about
> this and maybe we will get some clarity from him in due course.
>
> [1]
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2010-January/029987.html
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2010-January/030004.html
>
> For me that rules out solution 3. I have to say that while solution 2
> has been the one which we've been looking towards over the past few
> cycles and it definitely would have been my preferred option before
> this cycle, Ubuntu's adoption of Unity seems to me to have thrown that
> into difficulty, because the work required to customise
> gnome-user-docs to reflect an entirely different desktop seems to me
> to be very substantial. The adoption of Unity seems to signify a move
> away from Gnome by Ubuntu, and that seems to clash with a move towards
> Gnome by the ubuntu-docs team. If that's right, then solution 1 is
> more or less the only option left that I can think of. I'd be very
> interested to hear your thoughts.
>
> --
> Matthew East
> http://www.mdke.org
> gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF
>
> --
> ubuntu-doc mailing list
> ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc
>
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