Hi,
I've finally found time to push forward the "Getting Started with
Fedora" handbook.

Just an introduction for those who don't know what it is:
Almost two years ago, we created a Czech handbook for beginners to
start with Fedora. It has ~30 pages and we give it away at conferences,
presentations etc. It's been pretty successful and we decided to
translate it to English, but the project stalled because it didn't have
anyone who'd push it forward.

The handbook was rewritten to Asciidoc and moved to Pagure: 
https://pagure.io/ambassadors/fedora-handbook

The current status: it's fully translated to English and the content is
synced (we originally started translating the first version and the
Czech origin got updated meanwhile, now the content is the same again)
and the English version should be the origin from now on. Translations
of  the chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 have been proofread and should be fine
language-wise (kudos to Brian Excelbierd?).

What needs to be done:
1. The chapter 4 still needs proofreading by a native speaker.

2. English screenshots need to be taken and added.

3. We should go through the content and see if there is anything
missing within the intended scope*. I hope it's where marketing people
can help. You can read the source files, but if you'd like to read the
handbook in a formatted form, you can download:
https://pagure.io/ambassadors/fedora-handbook/blob/master/f/en-US/handb
ook.html

4. We need to refresh the cover and make it easily translatable. I've
already filed a ticket about it in the design team track: 
https://pagure.io/design/issue/508

5. Generate a final print PDF. There is no direct converter from
asciidoc to LaTex we've used for typesetting, but you can convert it to
Docbook and Docbook to LaTex. The same guy who prepared the print PDF
for the first Czech release is willing to prepare the English version
as well.

6. Printing - I can handle this for EMEA. The printing-works gave us a
really good price for good quality - ~$.50 for one print.

I'd like to get the English version out before Flock. Once it's ready,
we'll make a release branch. Another release will be worked on in
master and the release branch will accept fixes and translations.

I hope to see translations to other languages, especially the widely
used ones - Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi,...
Translations will simply get another subdirectories and translators
will translate whole files. We decided not go with gettext and
translations systems such as Zanata because first we have no experience
with them and second translating whole documents per strings or
paragraphs produces suboptimal results. Moreover the content of the
handbook should not change so much.
Every translation will have to find someone who will prepare the final
print PDF because that's something you can't really automate and the
volunteer we have now is willing to do only the Czech and English
versions because he doesn't know typesetting rules for other languages.

The handbook doesn't require frequent updates because the content is
pretty general and doesn't refer to particular releases. The first
version was released two years ago and the content is still pretty much
OK. We'd like to make one release a year, but if some translations are
a bit behind or decide to skip one year it should not be a major
problem.

Anyone willing to help with any of the todos? ;)

Jiri

*I'd like to keep the scope the same: the handbook should get the user
from visiting our booth or presentation at an event through downloading
Fedora, installing it to getting familiar with the system. It should
explain them what makes Fedora interesting and why it's worth a try. It
should not be a comprehensive guide to Fedora, it should rather link to
other sources in the end.

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