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Re: [udig-devel] User guide's and help system's future
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Matthias Basler wrote:
Maybe I should have asked that a bit earlier already:
How does the project team suggests that the
- user guide on the web page
- the uDig help and
- their translations
are to be maintained and kept up-do-date in the future?
Here is the plan :-)
I have set up a series of wiki spaces (EN, FR, DE) for each language
that seems to be of interest to people at the moment. The idea is to
have the spaces have the same "layout" in terms of page name. So
EN/Home, FR/Home and DE/Home all represent the "start" of the users
guide. We will export these spaces out into the uDig help plugin, and
associated language fragments. And generate a Table of Contents (TOC)
file based on the common page names (HOME, Getting Started, etc...).
Here is why I think this will work
1) The page name is not displayed by the Online Help viewer
2) We only have to generate one file by hand
3) It allows the community to edit, and comment on the documentation,
provide support for new languages etc...
There is a detailed page on how the Help system ties together here:
- http://udig.refractions.net/confluence/display/UDIG/Plugin+Help
Note: In addition to sorting out the User Guide pages, I am also
tranfering the Developer Guide to its own separate Space.
More information can be found here:
- http://udig.refractions.net/confluence/display/UDIG/Schedule
I've read some comments on that in this list and JIRA, but I don't think I've
gotten the overall picture yet. And I'm a bit confused, since the uDig web page
changes its layout weekly (It looks nice now!), and I constantly have to update
links.
That is true, we just moved over from CodeHaus, and are trying to take
advantage of the extra elbow room to set up a website that can be
maintained.
Especially some questions arise to me:
- The wiki user's guide is the basis for the help system, isn't it?
Yes :-)
- Where should contributers do changes to the user's guide: Should they edit the
wiki, the help system or both?
Wiki :-)
- How is a consistent layout guaranteed, especially in a wiki?
The page names are not gauranteed, I am wanting to set up this as a
convention. And alternative may be to make a TOC page for each language,
that we could cut and paste from. Please read the Plugin Help link for
details, after you have perhaps you would have a suggestion to which
method you think would work better in the long term?
- It's probably impossible to keep several language version synchronized at all
times. So, how and how often shall the translated versions get updated.
(Usually this happens for every major release.) Should they use the English
version as basis for retranslation every time or should they "just" update
existing translations?
You have caught us on the road to our first major release, we have been
focusing on the Capabilities the application, and API of the GIS
Framework. We will be a little bit longer setting up procedures. I
also wanted to wait until we had more interesting from volunteers such
as your self.
Procedures should be done as a community, not as a project.
Thanks again Mattias, looking forward to your thoughts.
Jody
(I see Richard has already responded to this, sounds like we can all
have a discussion)
