Request for Docs Freeze Extension for ubuntu-docs

[Jeremy Bicha]

Hi,

The Documentation String Freeze is scheduled for Thursday, but the
Ubuntu system docs won't be ready by then. The docs are reasonably
accurate (mostly thanks to all the work done upstream by the GNOME
Docs Team and periodic merges back to Ubuntu), but the documentation
on Unity is pretty incomplete, especially as compared to the thorough
documentation of System Settings (at least GNOME's version of System
Settings).

You can see the current state of our documentation by running

bzr branch lp:ubuntu-docs
cd ubuntu-docs/ubuntu-help/C
yelp .

Today I sat down to update the screenshots. I became understandably
annoyed when I realized that almost a month after User Interface
Freeze, the default wallpaper has not landed. Since the screenshots
that we use help to frame the text, it's more difficult for the
documenters to do our job. And it's not like generating the wallpaper
should be difficult as it's going to just be an evolution of the last
3 wallpapers, right?

I was a bit surprised to see that ubuntu-docs and kubuntu-docs are
listed on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NonLanguagePackTranslationDeadline .
It doesn't seem right to give the translators less time to translate
stuff that will be changing until the last possible minute especially
since Ubuntu has complete control over the packaging for these. Is
that page still up-to-date? It's important that we first understand
how long translators have before answering my other question: How much
additional time can we have to improve the Unity documentation?

If we can get an extra week or so, I can put out a blog post on the
planet and ask for help from the Community. I apologize for not having
done this a few weeks ago.

As far as Ubuntu docs is concerned, I think we can go into soft freeze
except for the Unity pages and I'd also like to request the option of
documenting Ubuntu additions to System Settings.

Finally, I've never understand what's possible for Docs in Stable
Release Updates. Can I add new strings, such as if we wanted to write
help for Update Manager? Or are we stuck until the next release? If
so, we are at a significant disadvantage compared to GNOME which
unthaws the freeze for their User Guide for a period of time after
each point release (GNOME String Freeze excludes documentation).
Certain issues (such as will be found in Canonical's new user testing)
won't be known at Documentation String Freeze.

Also, I've focused this email on ubuntu-docs. How are other docs teams
doing, like Server or Kubuntu?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/ReleaseSchedule

Thanks,
Jeremy