Request for Docs Freeze Extension for ubuntu-docs

[Kate Stewart]

Hi Jeremy, Peter; 
   In discussions with the translation and release teams, I think we've
come up with a workable solution.   Documentation Freeze Exception
approved for ONLY the Ubuntu system documents and Ubuntu Server Guide
from March 22nd to March 29th.

  To give the translators enough time,  the Translation Freeze deadline
for these documents will also be extended from April 12th to April 19th.

  Please let me know if there are any other UIFe's you're waiting on
landing to do the bulk of the work, so I can help expedite as we enter
Beta Freeze tomorrow.

Thanks, Kate
 

On Tue, 2012-03-20 at 22:43 -0400, Jeremy Bicha wrote:
> 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
>