<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> Phil Bull wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:1239202896.13743.37.camel@jaguar" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Hi Matt, On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 14:21 +0100, Matthew East wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">However, we should remember that writing documentation for Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu will inevitably require a separate work product. It will also require people with different experiences to contribute to each, not least because you definitely have to have used the flavour that you are documenting in order to contribute. I'm a huge proponent of doing everything possible to keep us coherent as a team, but we do need to recognise that people are likely to end up contributing to the area of the documentation that they are interested in and familiar with. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> Of course, but it's not necessarily about code sharing. We can only ever share a limited amount of code. I'm talking about working together in terms of style, planning and training. The documentation for each flavour is quite different in style and structure, and I don't see why it should be; I have no idea about the future plans of the other flavours; I don't feel that we have any sort of unified "process" for training newcomers. In short, I don't think that we are sharing ideas and expertise between the different groups, or forming a consensus on the best way of doing things for our users. In fact, the only thing we regularly discuss as a team is infrastructure! Thanks, Phil </pre> </blockquote> Hear, hear, Phil! I second your call for a more unified approach, especially in the getting newcomers to be contributors. The Beginners Team and Classroom teams are trying to develop ways to train new contributors as well. There is certainly overlap not just here but in other Ubuntu Teams as well. I've been following the Flossmanuals.net new processes and they can go from zero to documentation, even books in a week and in some cases less. It's an interesting wiki-based system that plays well with docbook and even printing PDFs through lulu.com. Not saying we should go that route but tossing it out as another possible method. Flossmanuals itself hosts the documentation sprints and has some funding to bring everyone into one room as well as remote contributors - the point is that it happens fast and the quality increases with each new book/manual they develop. Can we set up an IRC meeting? or I'm even happy to host a phone conference if it will help expedite moving things forward and getting inputs from all the teams. It's also been proposed/discussed at prior UDSes but still nothing concrete. cheers, Belinda </body> </html>