ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Benjamin Humphrey <humphreybc@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi guys,

I sent the below email to a couple of blogs, guvnr.com and Joey at
omgubuntu.co.uk as well as Martin Owens' blog - so look out for some blogs
about the alpha soon.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey,

I'd appreciate it if you could do a blog post about our alpha release which
came out on Wednesday.

Here's a breakdown of what's new in the alpha release for the manual. I've
attached the manual pdf to the email, and also you can direct your readers
to download it here:

http://humphreybc.homeip.net/files/main.pdf

You can also get it at our launchpad page,
http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-manual

== New Title ==

The manual is now called "Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04." Note the
codename/working name will remain as "ubuntu manual" or "The Ubuntu Manual
Project" due to simplicity.

== Loads more content ==

We've got about 80% of all the content written thus far for all the
chapters. Most of it has been written by scratch by about 10 dedicated
authors. It's mainly unedited - most of the editing will take place in the
next month or so. At the moment we have about 85 pages, but when we add
screenshots, more stuff to the glossary etc... it'll probably end up being
about 150 pages long.

== Chapter Re-arrangement ==

A lot of the chapters have been rearranged and renamed to make it easier.
Also, it's now split into two parts - the first half is for beginners, and
the second half is for more "advanced" topics. It's set out in a logical
order, so it begins with an introduction and then moves into explaining your
desktop and the default apps etc... we don't even mention the CLI till the
"advanced" section. It's designed to have a very easy learning curve.

== New additions ==

We now have a glossary, license, credits, clickable contents and new margin
notes.

== Translations ==

The manual is available in over 30 languages. Most of these aren't fully
translated yet because we're still writing content. We're going to freeze
the writing on March 18th to allow the translations to catch up. Also,
screenshots should start to appear around March 5th because that's the Lucid
UI freeze.

== Artwork ==

The title page at the moment is just a placeholder. There is now a dedicated
artwork team of around 5 people working on the title page, the style, and
icons for each chapter. The finished product is going to look fantastic.

== What's new for beta ==

In beta, release date of March 18th to coincide with the Lucid beta, we are
going to have all the writing completed and edited. Screenshots will start
to appear, there should be a new title page that resembles that very close
to the final one, the glossary will almost be finished and the style will
probably change somewhat with potentially different fonts and colours.

== Long term plan ==

For Lucid, we are aiming to be packaged in the repositories and have the PDF
version available for download on our own website, something like
ubuntumanual.com (but don't tell people the URL). There is a very slim
chance we'll get on the CD for Lucid - I skyped with Jono today about that
and he said it's unlikely. I'm hoping to get sponsorship to UDS-M and do
some presentations and talks about the manual. We should be able to get on
the CD for 10.10.

After Lucid, we plan to release an HTML5 version that will be hosted on our
website for those that have a non-bootable system or can't get access to it
in the repos for some reason. We are also thinking about writing a Kubuntu
Manual and possibly a Xubuntu Manual. We are also sharing a lot of our
content with the Ubuntu Learning Project and after our first release we will
begin the job of porting a lot of that over to ASCII or docbook which is
what they use.

== How users can keep track of the manual ==

We have plenty of ways to follow the progress. We've got our own planet,
http://planet.interesting.co.nz - as well as a Twitter account, identi.ca,
Facebook group, mailing list and an IRC chatroom.

All of these are linked to from our wiki:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual#Contact

(If you could mention all those and hyperlink them that would be super!)

Cheers,

P.S - don't forget to remind people that it's still in development and this
doesn't resemble what the final version will look like... a lot of people
like jumping the gun and think that this is the final release. We're only
25% finished!

-- 
Benjamin Humphrey

Ubuntu Manual Project Leader
Dunedin, New Zealand

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual
www.interesting.co.nz




-- 
Benjamin Humphrey

Ubuntu Manual Project Leader
Dunedin, New Zealand

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual
www.interesting.co.nz




-- 
Benjamin Humphrey

Ubuntu Manual Project Leader
Dunedin, New Zealand

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-manual
www.interesting.co.nz

Attachment: main.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document