[Ubuntu-manual] An interesting blog by Matt Zimmerman touches on docs
Kyle Nitzsche
kyle.nitzsche at canonical.com
Mon Jul 12 14:18:28 UTC 2010
My two-cent perspective on this topic (again ;-):
* In my opinion the overall trend is towards web-hosted help, for many
reasons (of which I listed some at the start of this thread, but they
include: easier for users to find content, easier for users to submit
content, higher quality content through easy user feedback/correction,
more flexible and dynamic content, broader scope of content (*ubuntu,
for example), no need for building/packaging/installing, a more dynamic
UI with beautiful design, with fresh eye-candy and a wonderful user
experience, easier to have a common source pool, a wonderful web
presence that is good *buntu 'marketing', etc.)
* As a first draft, I imagine something like this:
- *buntu help web portal
- with excellent search of all content, very prominent (and with
ability to search various sub-scopes of the whole site, for example
'official Ubuntu' content, 'official Kubuntu' content, or
'user-submitted Ubuntu Light' content)
- official articles
- user-submitted articles (some simple source format, TBD)
- user-ratings of articles and comments on articles
- editorial team to identify and write core 'official' articles
(source format, TBD, but needs to support at least xhtml and PDF, localized)
- editorial team also reviews user articles with high ratings and
promotes to 'official'
- all main variants and their launchers covered (Kubuntu,
Ubuntu/Gnome, UNE, Ubuntu Light, etc.)
- localization/translations facilities designed in from start
- site team to develop/maintain site
- build team to manage docs format, conversions, etc.
* There are disadvantages, for example no internet or very slow
internet limits access to help. Although I presume the no internet/very
slow internet situation will continue to become a smaller use case and
may eventually all but disappear.
* Therefore, I propose the strategic direction for *buntu help should
be towards a web-hosted help portal and away from packaged, on-disk docs.
Naturally, it would need to be phased in, and the question is
legitimately raised: how would users get critical content in the
meanwhile without web access, that is, could they download it, and if so
how. I imagine that current docs will continue on their current track(s)
for some time, during which time they would continue to be packaged and
installable. During this time the *ubuntu help website could come into
existence and may come to carry an increasingly important part of the
load. If it succeeds, the need for comprehensive on-disk help would be
understood to decrease and could therefore diminish in scope.
As to "downloading" the web site help. Perhaps the only parts that would
need to be downloaded would be the 'official' articles/content. So that
could be made available as PDFs. It would be a simple matter to generate
such PDFs when the articles are made official and to make them easily
downloadable.
Let me state one obvious point: all of this is highly theoretical and
speculative. It is not clear whether the ubuntu-docs and ubuntu-manual
communities see this as the correct direction.
Cheers,
Kyle
On 07/10/2010 08:22 AM, Jason Cook wrote:
> I think that limiting the documentation is a good idea. I think there
> if the documentation is removed from the CD then there needs to be an
> easy way to download it. The php.net <http://php.net> is one way to do
> it.
>
> On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 12:55 AM, Phillip Whiteside <phillw at phillw.net
> <mailto:phillw at phillw.net>> wrote:
>
> Hi Jason,
>
> I'm sort of aware that wget can 'suck' in web sites (e.g. wiki
> pages). I have not used it, but it does seem up to the job.
>
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=153766
>
> and
>
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=321434
>
> I do appreciate that room is tight on a CD, but if the images are
> kept to a minimum, html code as generated is quite a low over head.
>
> i'm not too sure how hard it would it would be to provide
> something like http://php.net/download-docs.php
>
> As we are discussing documents, as well as on / off line help is
> this a path worth investigating?
>
> I've seen a couple of instances of chm documents and have the
> linux version of the reader, it works very well. I'm not saying
> that we should go down that route, just that it is possible to get
> the html version of a help area down-loaded.
>
> Regards,
>
> Phill.
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Jason Cook <jason at cookcrew.ca
> <mailto:jason at cookcrew.ca>> wrote:
>
> I defiantly agree that the /primary/ development should be
> done on the web based content, *but* there should be a way to
> have the docs available offline. The way I recommended would
> work well, but would be *very* difficult.
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 4:30 PM, Kyle Nitzsche
> <kyle.nitzsche at canonical.com
> <mailto:kyle.nitzsche at canonical.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi Jason,
>
> On 07/09/2010 04:08 PM, Jason Cook wrote:
>
> The inclusion of on-disk documentation should be up to
> the user and be "package-wide". Having a
> "documentation" package that has the documentation for
> all installed applications. The way this would work
> (at least in theory) is:
>
> * on instalation of this package
> o finds all installed packages
> o check for documentation
> o download documentation
>
> * on installation of new package(s)
> o find newly installed packages
> o download new documentation
> * on removal of package
> o remove install documentation
>
>
> Being done this way allows the user to choose weather
> documentation is installed by default and conserves
> disk space by only having the documentation for
> installed application.This would also eliminate the
> need to install a separate package (such as
> openshot-docs) for documentation, it would be added
> automatically.
>
> That's a reasonable amount of infrastructure development
> in order to support downloadable, translated docs with the
> primary goal of supporting the use case of a user who is
> not connected to the internet. Yet, it assumes they do
> have an internet connection at other times (in order to
> download the docs). While it is possible, I tend to think
> a more strategic direction is increasingly more web based
> help with increasingly less on-disk help.
>
> Cheers,
> Kyle
>
> Jason Cook
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Jason Cook
>
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>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Jason Cook
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