ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Benjamin Humphrey <humphreybc@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

Firstly, thankyou so much for joining what I hope will be a successful and
fruitful project for the Ubuntu community. My ultimate goal is to have this
manual, or a subsidiary of it, featured on the Ubuntu website download page,
next to the official download, and together with your help we can make that
possible.

Okay, now, on to the project. Some points I'd just like to mention:


   1. Feel free to add any changes to the wiki, the Team page and the
   Project page. Add milestones, blueprints, releases, information,
   screenshots, you name it - I don't mind. I'm slowly getting everything up
   and running and detailed but it's going to take time, especially sorting out
   the bzr system.
   2. If anyone asks you what the point of this project is (when there are
   the Ubuntu docs, and the official Ubuntu book) just point them to the
   relevant chapter on the wiki. Once again, if you can think of any reasons
   that this project currently or should have that will differentiate itself
   from others, let me know and post it on the wiki.
   3. Regarding contributing, I think the easiest way to do it would be for
   each person to basically "claim" a chapter that they feel confident in
   writing thoroughly, let the mailing list know which one you've got and start
   working on it. Make sure to adhere to the current text styles I have set up
   and formatting - but please note this is not set in concrete, we can and
   probably will change the look of the manual over the course of its
   development.
   4. Who knows the most about Launchpad, bzr and merging updates here? I am
   pretty unfamiliar with this side of Ubuntu, so I would like to appoint
   someone else as an Admin to look after the branches and bzr. Possibly also
   set it up to use LaTeX as well.
   5. Tell your friends about it, try to get as many people on board as
   possible. If you know people who speak a language other than English
   fluently and are looking for somewhere to contribute in Ubuntu, point them
   at translating the manual!
   6. The first alpha release is at the end of January. That means we have a
   little over one month to basically complete all 11 chapters in *draft* form.
   Draft can be without screenshots, and references - we can add those in
   later. If you ARE meaning on adding things in later, please please please
   add in a note (ctrl+alt+n in openoffice) so that other contributors know
   what you mean when we come across something missing.
   7. And, lastly, I am by no means an expert on Launchpad, Projects,
   branches, bzr or writing manuals - I am completely open to feedback and
   ideas - in fact I WANT your ideas - that is the whole reason I made this
   public. This is a community effort, everyone who contributes in even the
   smallest way will get credit in the final release - your ideas and voice has
   as much authority as mine. If you think you're a pro at Ubuntu docs and have
   contributed before to various things, then I am happy to make you an
   Administrator, just ask.
   8. Oh and just before I head off, any Ubuntu members on the mailing list?
   If we could get a blog post about our shiny new project on Planet Ubuntu,
   then we would get a tonne more contributors.

My aim is to have this as one of the "features" for Lucid Lynx - a brand
spanking new official manual, and I hope people will download it with Lucid
Lynx.

PS - Who knows about licenses? I'm not sure what to licence the project
under. At the moment it's GPL V3 I think.

If you've got any questions, you can email the mailing list and someone will
help you out. Or email me at my address below. I'm going to talk to the IRC
people to see if we can get our own IRC channel, but for the mean time we'll
just hang out in #ubuntu-doc. My IRC nick is humphreybc.

Kind Regards,

-- 
Benjamin Humphrey

humphreybc@xxxxxxxxx
www.interesting.co.nz
www.benjaminhumphreyphotography.com