Proposed road map for ubuntu-docs

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

After Jeremy raised the question about which package to use for the 
Ubuntu documentation, we have had some discussion off-list, which ended 
up in <https://launchpad.net/bugs/1686267>. So I'd say that the working 
hypothesis, at least for now, is that we'll keep ubuntu-docs.

Now, the name of the package is not really the most important aspect. 
But the ubuntu-docs Bazaar branch is a handy tool, where all the docs 
pages reside, and from which we up to now have built both the 
ubuntu-docs package which is installed locally and the HTML version 
which is published at help.ubuntu.com. My hope is that we won't 
unnecessarily change that workflow.

So, what will be new? Most of the ubuntu-docs pages already origin from 
GNOME Help. This will obviously be even more true in Ubuntu 17.10, and 
the need for Ubuntu specific customization will be significantly 
reduced. The Unity specific pages will simply be dropped.

My idea is to fork the applicable version of the GNOME Help .page files, 
and as a first step replace the current pages in ubuntu-docs with the 
GNOME Help pages. That will give us this initial structure:

https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/3.24/

Then we should identify which of the current Ubuntu specific pages that 
make sense to keep, and make the necessary changes to integrate those 
pages into the structure.

Since the upstream GNOME Help pages will make up most of ubuntu-docs, 
and the GNOME desktop environment tend to change faster than what has 
been the case with Unity 7 in the past few cycles, it's important that 
we don't make it difficult to update to new page versions by forking 
again. This means that we should avoid to make Ubuntu adjustments to the 
GNOME pages. Instead, if we identify room for improvements, we should at 
first hand work with the GNOME folks and propose upstream changes.

As regards translations, at this time I think it makes sense to keep the 
Launchpad interface (the ubuntu-help translation domain). The GNOME Help 
pages have been translated upstream, and my intention is to try to 
somehow import those translations to Launchpad, so the translators don't 
need to redo the work. This will probably need some manual fiddling - 
can't tell exactly how at the moment.

What do you all think? Does this sound as a sensible synopsis of a road map?

-- 
Gunnar Hjalmarsson
https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj