Using Mallard for Ubuntu docs

[David Wonderly]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Using Mallard for Ubuntu docs
From: "David Wonderly" <david.wonderly at kubuntu.org>
To: "Phil Bull" <philbull at gmail.com>
CC: 

Phil, as one of the kubuntu doc guys i know we have talked about mallard in our docs. We are staying with docbook as upstream is stay there as of now.

Because kubuntu is shipped with kubuntu-docs and not ubuntu-docs I'm less worried about the docs being generated for a specific DE. I can more understand the wiki help files being genetic but when it comes to system docs each distro ships its own doc package written for the DE

I know this covers a bit more then just the usage of mallard in kubuntu however, I think its good to see a broad scope of goes on behind the scenes.

DW

"Phil Bull" <philbull at gmail.com> wrote:

>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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