John,
> There is a lot of great stuff there, but it is apparent there is no serious
> effort into maintaining the doc, version compatibility information,
> eliminating redundant or outdated stuff, etc. The "contrib" section is
When I joined e-smith in October, it was to head up a team of people to
build a training/certification program for resellers. Due to the glorious
investment market we've got out there right now, the "team" didn't happen
and furthermore we needed someone internally to coordinate the documentation
and produce the version 4.1 manual. Since my background has a fair amount
of technical writing, I agreed to add docs to my plate as well and charged
into doing the manual and getting that both online and in printed form.
I've enjoyed it immensely and it's great working with the people here at
e-smith and also this community of users and developers!
Along the way, I found that there were various HOWTO docs floating around
in different parts of cyberspace and that somehow we needed to coordinate
that information so that it could help e-smith users. So one day a month
or so ago, I quickly wrote the page listing HOWTOs and have added
ones that others have sent.
But your criticism is valid... two things have been in my queue to address
for some time: 1) providing a page and template for how HOWTOs should be
structured (including revision information); and 2) reviewing the existing
docs to see how appropriate they are. One of the first things I have
been planning to ask the new "doc" list when I start using it
next week was for ideas about how better to structure the HOWTO section...
the issue really just is that at the moment docs are pretty much handled
by me with some help from Kirrily when she can. (And I also have a
training program to launch!)
So it's not a lack of interest or intent, just time and energy!
Which was a large part of the reason I set up the "doc" mailing list...
to help coordinate the efforts of people interested in helping improve
our documentation.
> Not to be one to point out a problem without a solution, I am willing to
> offer to coordinate this and clean it up. I am more of a sysadmin type than
Excellent! I've got some deadlines next week that are going to keep
me pretty darn busy through Wednesday, but perhaps sometime after that
we could touch base and talk about this more. Your help would be very
much appreciated.
Thanks,
Dan
P.S. If you haven't already joined "doc", please do so - send a message to
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]".
--
Dan York, Director of Training [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph: +1-613-751-4401 Mobile: +1-613-263-4312 Fax: +1-613-564-7739
e-smith, inc. 150 Metcalfe St., Suite 1500, Ottawa,ON K2P 1P1 Canada
http://www.e-smith.com/ open source, open mind
