Using Mallard for Ubuntu docs

[Tom Davies]

Hi :)

I agree. I think we have to be specific for things like "gedit" in coding brackets so that people can just copy&paste without really understanding what is going on until they have tried it a few times.

Often in answers section when/if we point people to documentation we make it clear that different distros use different default text-editors and some people prefer to use their own which is fine. Often we try to find clues about which version they are using although they are often shy if they feel they are cheekily asking in the wrong forum.

Also within the documentation itself we do sometimes see that people try so hard to re-explain the differences between the different versions that it makes the documentation very hard to follow. I think those differences could usefully be covered by a separate page which could then be linked to. In this case a page about 
/community/text-editors
might help clear things up without interrupting the flow of the separate pages.

Since linux is so versatile and people will have tweaked their own installation you could argue that giving any kind of help or documentation is pointless as it will be inaccurate on at least one person's machine somewhere. I think we have to draw a line somewhere and have to hope that people are not completely stupid all the time and are in fact capable of working things out from a concrete example, after a bit of playing around perhaps

Regards from
Tom :)




________________________________
From: Phil Bull <philbull at gmail.com>
To: Phillip Whiteside <phillw at phillw.net>
Cc: lubuntu-desktop <lubuntu-desktop at lists.launchpad.net>; ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
Sent: Sun, 4 July, 2010 21:45:53
Subject: Re: Using Mallard for Ubuntu docs

Hi Phill,

On Thu, 2010-07-01 at 23:36 +0100, Phillip Whiteside wrote:
> as one who does not use gnome, my little two cents worth is that
> instructions should not be tied 100% to gnome. Whilst the vast
> majority use 'vanilla' ubuntu, there are other flavours. As ubuntu is
> ubuntu, should we be as aware of that as we are translations? 
> Xubuntu, Kubuntu etc. Each of the flavours has translation teams and
> I'm sure some translators work on more than one flavour, the 'base'
> installation documents need to cover all that is common (grub, kernel
> etc) after that how does for example, the chromium browser team from
> ubuntu work with those from kde work with xfce, work with lxde etc ?
> I've seen some excellent wiki pages that put in the difference between
> gksudo and kdesu. One easy example for lubuntu (allbeit not a fully
> fledged ubuntu yet) is that it would be leafpad and not gedit that is
> the shipped programme for people to do that lower level of editing
> with.

The use of Mallard with other (non-GNOME) flavours of Ubuntu is a little
more complicated. I think Xfce may be willing to adopt Mallard, but I'm
not sure what the situation is with KDE. The others I have even less
idea about.

Where instructions can be written generically they should be, but there
are going to be lots of instances where GNOME-specific instructions have
to be used. Trying to write too generically will confuse users, and
providing multiple instructions in one topic would also be confusing
because then users have to figure out which DE they're using every time.

In order to promote re-use between different flavours, perhaps we can
come up with some system of flagging-up completely reusable topics, and
topics which can be reused with some editing? That way, the job of
editing Ubuntu/GNOME docs to work with Kubuntu/KDE or whatever could be
made easier. There was also talk of a "conditional element" feature in
Mallard that would insert the right material depending on the DE that
was running, but that could get complicated and ugly. It's something we
should play around with, anyway.

Thanks,

Phil

-- 
Phil Bull
https://launchpad.net/~philbull


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