ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Patrick Dickey <pdickeybeta@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Elizabeth,

Out of curiosity, how difficult is it to convert from regular text to
DocBook? I'm looking at the idea of being able to combine both projects,
and have the authors write in plain text, and someone else convert to
DocBook for the Documentation Team, and someone to convert to LaTeX for
the Ubuntu Manual. This could accomplish three things: 1) make it easier
to get contributors, since they don't need to know LaTeX or DocBooks to
help out, 2) maybe bring both projects to a similar level of
technicality (make it easier for the average user to understand both),
and 3) provide you with a pdf version of the Desktop Guide that you
create already (this would be down the road, if we actually merge into
one project/team/product).

I like your idea for right now (the structure and not merging the two,
per se). However reading the text of the meeting, it seemed like the
idea was to eliminate the Ubuntu Manual completely. Even if we don't
merge the two at this stage, if it's possible to just write our sections
in plain text, and have someone else convert it to DocBooks, that will
help with what you want, and will help get more people involved (IMHO).

Have a great day.:)
Patrick.

On Tue, 2014-07-15 at 03:22 -0700, Elizabeth K. Joseph wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 6:25 AM, Jim Connett <jimandmarcy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Finally (and please receive this last point with my highest respect), both
> > projects appear to be in disarray, but for different reasons. It seems the
> > docs team has been under the control of just a few people with no real push
> > (that I've seen) for new volunteers, and the UMP is always welcoming to new
> > volunteers but is lacking a focused and sustained recruiting effort. I think
> > it's good to consider if the docs team even wants to merge with the UMP. If
> > they are not actively seeking help or don't support new volunteers (as
> > seemed to be the case when Hannie tried to get involved), then the UMP would
> > be seen as hostile rather than complementary. Additionally, the
> > organizational structures of the two teams seem to be less defined than
> > before. In order for any merger to work, I believe one of the two parties
> > has to be dominant, organized, and confident. I really don't see either of
> > these teams in that position right now. Given this opinion/perspective, I
> > think it would be disastrous to merge the two projects.
> 
> Just to quickly chime in here - on the Ubuntu Documentation side we've
> spent the past year working very hard to document our processes, grow
> the team and start welcoming new members again. All administrators of
> the project are now active contributors, and while there are still
> only a few, that's only because recruiting volunteers is hard and is
> no longer because we're just telling people to read a wiki and leaving
> them on their own. We still have work to do, but the team is in a much
> better place than when UMP was started and it was near impossible for
> folks to get involved. Feel free to join #ubuntu-doc to chat with us
> :)
> 
> We also don't *want* the Desktop guide to be difficult for newcomers
> to read, it's just that it's historically been hard to contribute to
> so only highly technical people have made contributions - translated:
> they tend to write at a higher technical level. So I don't know that
> our goals are really that different.
> 
> That said, I'd love to see UMP become a part of the Ubuntu
> Documentation team, but not merge the Desktop docs with the Manual at
> this stage. Simply joining the team would result in the Documentation
> team being a structure looking something like this:
> 
> Ubuntu Documentation
>  - Ubuntu Desktop Documentation
>   - Shipped with Ubuntu
>   - Published at: https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/ubuntu-help/index.html
>  - Ubuntu Server Documentation
>   - Published at: https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/serverguide/index.html
>   - Also a .pdf version:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/serverguide/serverguide.pdf
>  - Ubuntu Community Help Wiki
>   - Lives at https://help.ubuntu.com/community
>  - Ubuntu Manual
>   - Published at ubuntu-manual.org as a PDF and available as printed book
>   - We could perhaps add a link to a page like this:
> https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/index.html
> 
> This cycle the Documentation team has been working hard to get
> feedback from Ubuntu Developers about new features, so it would be
> helpful if we were all together to accept that information for the
> updates to Desktop docs and Manual :)
> 
> Maybe some day we could talk about merging the Desktop guide and
> Manual more officially, but given they are written in different
> formats and seem to have different aims, this would take some amount
> of work and some major decisions.
>