Would a wiki really help make the documetnation better? Wouldn't there be less quality control in regards to a wiki. Who would control what went on the wiki, how would the wiki deal with spam? Is it really that hard to contribute to KDE-Docs? We have this converstation all the time with ubuntu-docs as well.
How would documentation on the wiki translate into a help manual for offline access? Not everyone has high speed or constantly connected documentation. How does the documentation on wiki translate into documentation on the client in a help manual? If a distro links to the documentation currently (as the Kubuntu docs do) how do you deal with this downstream? As far as I know there is currently not a wiki -> docbook plugin that works constistent, once again something the Ubuntu Doc team has tried to get to work correctly in MoinMoin -> Docbook and also Docbook -> MoinMoin. Jonathan On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 6:23 PM, Duns Ens <dunsens at web.de> wrote: > Hi, > > I have already posted this to the kde-devel list and on my blog here: > http://kde.blogsite.org/?q=node/56 > kde-devel comments concluded in something like: it is good idea to use a > wiki > but the wiki markup needs to be extended to get the same semantics like > docbook has. There is also the docbookwiki project which natively supports > docbook, but is not sure to be maintained and featured enough for this > project. MediaWiki would need some plugins to add the necessary markup for > docbook like semantics. Unfortunately I have other stuff to do, some > plasmoids > and smaller bugs in the pipe and cannot help myself. > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > I have had an idea way back about improved documentation for KDE which I'd > like to share since Harald has pointed out the miserable state of > documentation in KDE. I know that ideas are only worth one cent or so > compared > to the implementation, but still I think it would be really helpful: > My idea is to use an english Wiki for documenation. This might not be new, > but > what I mean is to actually integrate the internal help with an online Wiki. > That way users can and would write the documenation themselves. This would > have two advantages: a) the documentation would be most likely better than > what it is now (this is not hard to achieve...) and b) it is a much easier > way > to start to contribute to KDE than specific translation or bug hunting > stuff. > Just link from the doc page to the online Wiki for updodate docs and there > propose to fix it if it is outdated, wrong or missing. > Then pull the Wiki content before string freeze from the database, add > screenshot media as uploaded by users and convert it to the docbook. Next > step > is that the maintainer reads this article *one* time and checks for > mistakes > or shortcomings as well as docbook fixes. And then move it to the > translation > team. > > Guessing the interest of most developers and their personal fun factor it > is > very unlikely that the documenation will be done sanely, completely and > reliably ever, users would be much more reliable because they are plenty > and > they use app documentation (at least a view of them) and they know what > information they missed. > The advantage over a drop of the whole doc stuff inside KDE is that you > have > clear maintained versions shipping with each KDE version and there *are* > still > offline users around... + you don't get a versions mixup: Many distros will > ship specific KDE versions for years and it might quite differ for lets say > 3 > years = 6 KDE versions. Of course you could do online versioning only as > well, > but serious reviewed offline documentation is really more professional. I > guess that it is a must have for the default de of the major distros, e.g. > mandriva. > > Cheers, > duns > > P.S.: Originally I've although thought to link to a Wiki page from each > KMessageBox automatically, so users can share experience with certain > errors > or infoboxes they don't know how to deal with and will make it more > transparent where the error could be caught better. Of course this is > related > to bug reports as well. > _______________________________________________ > kde-doc-english mailing list > kde-doc-english at kde.org > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-doc-english > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-doc-english/attachments/20080819/4ab06809/attachment.htm
