dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[johansa@xxxxxxxxxx]

Well, I was caught off guard yesterday and called a "nerd" for the first
time in my life as a collague saw I was reading about docbook on my
cellphone during a dinner party...

As I think Ola mentioned on this list, we have a (doku)wiki up and running
here
http://www.openhealthconsortium.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dhis_2_documentation

We are in the process of making a ToC, and HMN is hiring a technical
writer to contribute. Of course he doesn't know DHIS as well as the
developers (but that is also an asset sometimes), but he has written large
manuals before and should be able to help us with style, language etc. The
idea is that each page can be translated to other languages, so as soon as
we get something down in english, the same pages can be translated by
users and developers into their own language. There is also a wiki2pdf
function, but I haven't tested that yet. The content of the wiki can of
course be kept locally (such as on the DHIS-on-a-stick Ola and Knut has
worked on), and updated when online.

Is there a need for another platform? I think the most important is to get
something substantial quite soon. I have no idea if docbook is compatible
with the wiki, there might be some export functionality?
Johan

> Helvete.  Sorry. Was meant to go the entire list.
>
> I will  give a try with this the GIS document, and then we will see if
> DocBook catches on for the documentation, which I will be willing to help
> with as well, but this is obviously a bit more work. :)
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 6:20 PM, Jo Størset <storset@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> (I guess this mail just reached me?)
>>
>> Den 10. sep. 2009 kl. 17.25 skrev Jason Pickering:
>>
>> Bob- I tried with OpenOffice, but was did not succeed. It seems to be
>> for
>> older versions and I could not get it to work with my version (3.1 on
>> Windows).
>>
>> Jo, I completely agree with you, to a certain point. It will not
>> necessarily speed up the process necessarily, but it will make it more
>> sustainable and flexible. It is easy enough to go from DocBook into
>> HTML,
>> and not too difficult to go the other way. I am just thinking in the
>> long
>> term. In addition to documentation, we need to think about training
>> materials, user guides and so forth. I am not sure that the Wiki
>> approach
>> necessarily lends itself to developing these types of materials. I think
>> the
>> Wiki is a great tool for collaboration. Actually, I think in many places
>> (Zambia for instance where I am) having access and the ability to
>> check-out
>> documentation, edit it, and check it back in is actually preferable to
>> having to be connected and edit it on a Wiki. Internet access is
>> incredibly
>> expensive, slow and difficult to access here. One of the reasons why I
>> would
>> prefer the version control system (in addition to it being version
>> controlled) is that i only need to download what is new, like the code.
>>
>> I agree with your point that it raises the bar a bit in terms of having
>> to
>> get a version control client installed, and learn the structure of
>> DocBook,
>> but I also feel that as much effort that given that so much effort has
>> and
>> is being put into the coding of the application, the documentation of it
>> should be just as rigorous. It may be more difficult, but it certainly
>> is
>> the better choice in my mind.  DocBook seems to work great for other
>> OpenSource projects, but I am not going to spend any more effort
>> beginning
>> to develop the docs, if it is not going to be sustainable.
>>
>> Knut, Ola, anyone else..thoughts?
>>
>>
>> I guess I could have made my position clearer: go for it! Since you are
>> willing to contribute to the documentation, we should tailor everything
>> to
>> your needs. Let us deal with the other stuff later, when we have to
>> worry
>> about maintaining great documentation :)
>>
>> Jo
>>
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