Ubuntu desktop documentation scope and location

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Hi Heather,

I'll start with a short reply, mostly commenting on a couple of desktop 
guide aspects, since it's rather late here..

But first: Welcome to the world of docs! :)

On 2022-04-06 23:31, Heather Ellsworth wrote:
> ## Tooling
> I've been told that we are going to use discourse as our
> documentation infrastructure. I don't have a deadline, but it seems
> like any major changes are strongly encouraged to be made in the
> discourse direction. This seems to be a fact, regardless of many
> opposing opinions. My point in bringing it up here is to not launch
> any sort of flame war, but to assume this and just move on.

Well, without wanting to start a flame war, I think the desktop guide 
should be an exception from that. Reasons:

1. As Doug mentioned, the bulk of the Ubuntu Desktop Guide is actually 
pages (including translations) from upstream GNOME Help. By moving it to 
discourse we would need to reinvent the wheel. Lots of extra work both 
initially and as regards maintenance. (Who would do it?)

2. The desktop guide is targeting end users, and unlike much of other 
kind of documentation, it's important that it is made available in many 
languages. AFAIK discourse is not suited for dealing with translations.

At the meeting Doug and I joined with Monica and Daniele we emphasized 
the importance of keeping the current way to handle the desktop guide, 
at least as long as Ubuntu is shipped with a GNOME DE.

Is there any other reasoning available, with pros and cons, which 
specifically addresses the desktop guide?

> 2. When I still need to make a page NOW! (to have it for the
> release), because we don't have a permanent solution (discourse)
> setup, I'm told to put it on the wiki. But important product pages
> [0] should not look like they are from 2004. So is there another
> place?

May be worth mentioning this page:

https://help.ubuntu.com/rst

It originates from a google docs document. So if you are in a hurry, 
that's one possibility as a temporary solution.

The '2004 style' is not a law of nature at help.ubuntu.com. :) It's 
merely due to a lack of resources to adapt it. A new temporary page may 
well have a more modern header.

> ## Content
> help.ubuntu.com is great, but it would be nice if the screenshots
> were based in Ubuntu rather than GNOME OS. I don't see an easy fix
> that isn't extremely manual and a huge maintenance burden. Has this
> been discussed before and thoughts on a fix?

Actually we recently talked about if from another angle but screenshots. 
Jon Duncan, a new docs team member, reached out to the desktop team 
through this topic:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/27335

And Jeremy provided an extensive list of Ubuntu changes. But that's 
something to consider for coming cycles.

-- 
That's all for tonight.

Cheers,

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