Hello,
I'm now using GRASS for a while and try to introduce it to the students'
education. So I think I could try to help with the enhancement of the
documentation. But I am not a native english speaker. Extending, I could
offer my support for german and spanish documentation.
Unfortunately, I do not feel able to coordinate this..;-)
Please let me know, where you could need my help!
Manuel
Michael Barton schrieb:
The GRASS team needs your help. As you all are well aware, GRASS is
enormously sophisticated spatial analysis sophisticated. This also
makes it equally complicated and sometimes baffling for users, with
over 300 individual modules. GRASS has a top notch integrated and
contextual help system. BUT we need help in making the most of the
help system.
As with all open source software, the development team is a group of
dedicated volunteers who work hard (in addition to their regular jobs)
to create the first rate software that you all use. They are also very
responsible in trying to document the program modules they code and
maintain.
This is where your help is needed. In spite of best intentions and
efforts, development team members with coding skills need to put most
of their always limited time into writing and maintaining the code
that makes GRASS such a powerful and versatile software package. Many
of you in the GRASS community are expert users even if you do not have
expertise in programming. It is also clear from the traffic on this
list that you are regularly willing to share your expertise with
others by answering questions.
Would some of you be willing to join the development team to help
manage and improve the GRASS documentation and help system? You don't
need to be proficient at programming, and because this is a team
effort, you don't even need to know all parts of GRASS. What is needed
is sufficient knowledge of some GRASS modules to help improve and
maintain their documentation pages, a little bit of html (the help
pages are in very basic html), and a desire to work cooperatively to
improve GRASS. Here is a partial list of roles that are needed.
Individual module management:
-Add or improve examples. Examples of how to use a module to get
different results is very helpful
-Add or improve example graphic in modules. Screen shots are often
worth many words
-Improve and enrich descriptions in English. In many cases,
documentation was written by valiant souls for whom English is a 2nd
(or 3rd or 4th) language. Native speakers are needed to enrich these
descriptions.
-Add or improve non-English versions of the documentation. GRASS is
trying hard to be international and is used around the world. Much of
the operational language of the modules have been translated to other
languages (though a lot more help is needed in this too). Help and doc
pages in other languages would make GRASS much more usable globally.
Overall:
-Documentation management. Someone or ones to mangage a team of
documentation helpers, ID holes and weak spots in the documentation,
coordinate with the coding team, and think about documentation standards.
If you are interested and willing to contribute a small part of your
time to help others use GRASS, please respond to the GRASS Developer
list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and copy the GRASS project team leader,
Markus Neteler <neteler [at] fbk.eu>
Michael
--
_______________________________________________________________________
Dr. Manuel Seeger
Wiss. Assistent Scientific Assistant
Physische Geographie Dpt. of Physical Geography
FB VI - Geographie/Geowissenschaften Geography/Geosciences
Universität Trier University of Trier
D - 54286 Trier
Tel.: +49-651-201 4557
Fax: +49-651-201 3976
Web: http://www-neu.uni-trier.de/index.php?id=9607
_______________________________________________
grassuser mailing list
grassuser@grass.itc.it
http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser