Uwe Stöhr wrote: > Hello LyXers, > > I want to restart to work on the documentation but at first want to have > you OK about the HOW.
Great! > The documentation is currently out of date, many menu names have changed > since the last release, new features like change tracking are not or not > properly explained. > Then main problem I see is that we don't have somebody who's actively > working on the documentation. But besides this the inconsistent > documentation we currently have is a result that the developer of a new > feature add a section to the userguide without cross-checking if the > section is consistent with others. That can be excused due to lack of > time but for the future I propose this way: Consistency is nice, but more important is that a feature is documented at all. You have a chance to find something in a badly organised manual, you don't have a chance to find something that is not contained in the manual. > --- > When a new feature is implemented to be released in the next LyX version > the developer(s) who wrote the feature create a separate LyX-document > describing the feature. Then somebody who wasn't involved in the > development of the feature checks if he's able to use the feature as > described. This would help us to implement features user friendly > because the revisers of the document will lead to feedback about the > implementation, the usability and the stability of the feature before > the feature is released. If the feature is stable its describing > document is implemented into the userguide. This is too complicated IMO. I would already be very pleased if developers who implement a new feature/rearrange menu entries would simply add a section to the appropriate manual/reflect the changed menus. I fear that if these things have to be implemented in a separate document documentation updates will happen even less than it currently does. By all means it should be avoided that translated docs become more recent/contain more information. This is the case with the current german userguide, but if other languages start to do this too we get a mess. The english version is the master version, the other languges should be kept up to date by the translators. Uwe, I think that you should work on the official documentation from the beginning, and put it frequently in svn. Otherwise I fear that we'll get a situation similar to your windows installer where there was a lot of duplicated effort. Georg
