Details of the meeting held on November 24th, 2006

Irc Meeting logs are available here.

Agenda

• Discussion of specifications
• Move to bzr

• KubuntuDesktopGuide

• Ubuntu Training Program - how can we help?
• Ubuntu Open Week - ideas for the session?
• Use of screencasts?
• Xubuntu documentation efforts

Details

Discussion of specifications

This was mostly a discussion of TopicBasedHelp (TBH). General consensus was that it was a good idea to have topic based help. The idea is to edit stuff on the wiki, and then use moin2xml to convert it to docbook. The following workflow was decided:

• Merge docbook into moin
• Decide on list of topics to ship
• Start test convertions to work bugs out of the converter

This also means that we need to modify the way we use the wiki, maybe have ACL's on those pages and so on to prevent accidental/intentional edits, etc.

Kubuntu Documentation

After some discussion, a conclusion was reached that Kubuntu could use topic based help pretty easily too. The topic based help would then link to the the other KDE documentation. The khelpcenter package might need some minor changes which might need approval from Riddell. (the start page needs to be changed in the help.desktop)

List of docs to ship

It was decided that initially both the desktop guides, and server guide will be shipped in the TBH format. The packaging guide and the rest will be shipped in the usual way.

Ubuntu Open Week

A few docteam members are interested in presentation on few/all of the topics below:

• Intro to doc team, what we do and how to get involved
• Wiki docs
• Shipped docs

Also, it is necessary to cleanup the high visibility wiki pages. (PageHits)

Bazaar for Ubuntu Documentation

Riddell proposed that we use bzr instead of svn as it is better integrated in launchpad. After some discussion, it was decided that bzr could be used without any changes to our workflow instead of svn. However, due to speed issues, and no real need to move from svn, it was decided that a few docteam members would try it out, and decide on whether to move to bzr later.

Kubuntu Desktop Guide

To move to topic based help as decided. Structure will be the same as in TopicBasedHelp, division of work to be decided between nixternal, jjesse and robotgeek.

Ubuntu Training

The Ubuntu Training Program wants the documentation team to involve themselves in the training effort. (https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2006-November/007407.html)

If the UTP wanted the docteam to write training manuals for them, the general consensus was that we are short on resources to do our own docs at this point of time!

However, we should await further information from them. (nixternal is contact person on this behalf)

Screencasts

Since screencasts are a really useful tool, but can't be shipped by default on CD's, they should probably be hosted on help.ubuntu.com (since the contact person on ubuntuvideo.com is AWOL).

This would also mean that screencasts have to be done with default profiles, and we would have to create a styling guide for them.

Xubuntu Documentation

The documentation efforts for Xubuntu is pretty poor and ""somerville32"" wanted to discuss how to organize a concentrated effort into improving the situation. It was suggested that he contact the ubuntu-doc and xubuntu mailing lists to find people who are interested in the effort.

CategoryDocteam