Documentation Rewrite Update

[Jack Fromm]

Elizabeth and Pasi,

I'm willing to help and have some time but I'm still not clear on what I 
can contribute and how.  I volunteered as a Writer and Grammar Editor 
and I made some minor punctuation and formatting edits to a couple 
sections of the wiki tonight but I don't think that's really what you 
need at this point.  It sounds like the main thing you need right now is 
to copy sections of the old documentation that have not been marked as 
obsolete to the wiki and then start rewriting them.  This is where I'm 
unclear on how to proceed or even if I'm qualified.  I know nothing 
about Docbook so I thought I would try Pasi's alternative suggestion 
(opening the Help file in my Xubuntu installation and copying and 
pasting into the Wiki).  But I quickly discovered two problems with 
that.  First, it means that all the formatting would have to be 
completely re-done manually.  Second, I don't know what guidelines you 
are using for updating the content.  For example, "Software 
Repositories" in Section 10 of the old documentation has been copied to 
Section 8 in the wiki, renamed "Additional Software Repositories" and 
there are just three stub paragraphs in there that obviously need to be 
fleshed out but which are also quite different from the old document.  
Based on that example, I'm not sure how much help it would be to just 
copy over sections from the old document.  It sounds like you're aiming 
for more of a major rewrite and not just a cleanup.

I hope I haven't completely misinterpreted what you're asking for. If 
not, could you elaborate a little more on exactly what someone with my 
skills should be doing to help move the project along?

Thanks,
Jack

On 08/20/2012 12:45 AM, Elizabeth Krumbach wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Pasi Lallinaho has written a blog post explaining where we are with
> the current documentation rewrite and explained how those who have
> signed up to help with writing can pitch in now:
>
> http://open.knome.fi/2012/08/17/working-on-the-xubuntu-documentation-rewrite/
>
> We're still using the wiki that was set up, unfortunately there aren't
> any simple tools for converting to Docbook that are currently
> maintained, so this will be more of a manual process.
>
> This all means that we really need to get the rewrite wrapped up with
> in the next week or so if we want to have any hope of getting
> editorial review and the conversion to Docbook done by September 20th.
> We really need your help!
>
> Thanks everyone, please feel free to ask if you have any questions.
>