making help helpful

[Philippe Landau]

Robert Crosbie wrote:
> I know that if I'm having trouble with a tool or a setting, I don't
> even bother to look at the tools help, I search the ubuntu wiki site,
> or the ubuntu forums.
exactly.

> Curious as to how I could help improve the documentation system, I had
> a look at the guides and handbook. I was quite daunted.  I have little
> desire to figure out the internals of yelp, docbook, scrollkeeper,
> cvs, etc just to be able to contribute.  I assume that others feel
> this way too which is why everyone heads to forums and wikis to write
> their guides.
> 
> If in the end all the documentation is just xml, wouldn't it be
> possible to provide a wiki interface that would make editing the help
> system super simple?  Does such a project exist already?  Judging by
> the success of wikipedia, wikis in general and forums, I would assume
> that this would encourage many more people to contribute.
excellent idea.
especially if help provides content from documentation and from wiki, 
all stored locally offline,
providing links to  the corresponding searches on forum and bugzilla
that would open in the browser.
the contents could be updated via synaptic.

kind regards     philippe