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Re: [cdt-dev] CDT docs and need Info on Indexer pref panel
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James --
I think setting up the CDT docs on a wiki and opening up to other contributors is a great idea. Not sure if there is time to do anything with this idea prior to Helios release, but if there is general agreement here then it should definitely be done once Helios is released.
// frank
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Hi Frank,
That sounds like a really noble cause!
There are a few things I've found problematic when working with the
documentation (both while tweaking, and as a user) that I thought it
would be good to enumerate:
- Much of it was created using FrontPage and isn't easy for
developers (if they have the inclination) to improve with a text
editor
- Many existing features are documented 3 times: under tasks,
concepts and reference. As a user you need to look in all 3 places.
- The documentation is locked away in CVS.
The last point is the most major in my mind. It's near impossible for
people to contribute improvements to the documentation. The recent
user-contributions I've seen fly-by have been for typos rather than
anything substantial...
A number of projects have jumped on the documenation crowd-sourcing
band-wagon. There are a few blog posts about it:
http://aniszczyk.org/2010/03/13/crowdsourcing-documentation-at-eclipse/
http://greensopinion.blogspot.com/2010/03/crowdsourcing-documentation-made-easy.html
We're really lucky to have some dedicated question-answerers on the
Eclipse forums. It would be great to tap some of the community and get
them to help out with improving our documentation situation. IMHO
developers often don't make the best documenters, and only the
community at large can point out the deficiencies that we'd never see.
Having spent the afternoon facing users (internal ones at that) it's
really amazing what knowledge/concepts we take for granted...
What do people think about opening up the documentation to the community?
Cheers,
James
