ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[c7p <c7p.admin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello team,
as you may know we have moved to Oneiric series, and much work has been done
on "Ubuntu Desktop" chapter already. What the project needs for this series,
is new authors and editors.

We have agreed to make two radical changes in this series:

1)The authors and editors, don't have to use bazaar and TeX for their work.
The procedure that an author/editor should follow to share his/her work, and
test it, i.e get the branch, make changes push changes, pull, compile the
manual etc- is complex, and hampers the writing process. From now on authors
can use google docs or other live services to share their work with the
team, thus making the process as easy as possible for the author. When an
author has finished his/her work, me and other team members will add Latex
markup and push it to the bzr branch. So to recap, authors don't have to
mess with the bzr and TeX, they can use live document services or whatever
eases them and the rest of the team. If they want to use bzr and TeX Live
they are free to do so.

2)From now on an author will be concentrated to one or more sections of a
chapter. So there isn't "chapter author", there is "section author". In the
credits we can write as you wish, but this isn't the essence of the issue.
The workload of a chapter is huge, if we want to publish a qualitative
manual, so a whole chapter is daunting and can't be managed by one or even
two authors with limited free time.

We haven't announced that we are looking for new contributors publicly, but
we are about to do so. I share with you the list of the tasks per chapter.
If you want to apply as an author
1) read the the http://ubuntu-manual.org/jobs
2) send us an mail with some info of you (experience with Ubuntu, average
amount of time that you can spend for the project per week etc) at
jobs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx . You may select one or more tasks/sections from the
following list.

Chapters:

*Installation*

There aren't radical changes from 11.04. An author is needed for this
chapter to make proper changes to the chapter.

*Ubuntu Desktop*


   - Customizing your Desktop (covering Appearance)


*Working with Ubuntu*

Need authors for the following (sub)sections:


   - Getting online (covers Mozilla Firefox)


   - Reading and composing mail (covers ThunderBird)


   - Using instant messaging (covers Empathy)


   - Microblogging (covers Gwibber)


   - Viewing and Editing Photos (covers Shotwell)


   - Watching videos and movies (covers Totem)


   - Listening to audio and music (covers Banshee)


   - Setting Ubuntu One


   - Ubuntu One preferences


There is already material written for all the above sections, apart
from *Listening
to audio and music** *and* **Reading and composing mail**, *that have to be
written from the scratch.


*Software Management*


   - Using Software Center


   - Managing Additional software


*Hardware*

One or more editors to make minor changes and proofread, so as sections
correspond to the new reality (mainly Unity).


*Advanced Topics*

Need editors/authors to update the chapter. Minor changes to be done.

*Troubleshooting*

Need an author for the following sections: (You are free to propose other
sections).


   - [NEW] Resolve common Unity issues


2)And editors to make minor changes and proofread, so as sections correspond
to the new reality (mainly Unity).


Thank you for your time, have a nice week !

--John
c7p @ freenode