Based on a discussion on IRC, we'd like to ask for comments from people
who have authored or contributed to documentation.
At present, authors add their name and sometimes a description of their
work like "Contributed by" or "Rewritten by".
These author attributions are often quickly outdated as numerous other
contributors fix problems and modify or add new content to the same
section.
There is potential for improving how this information is displayed.
One possibility is auto-generating an Authors page, showing a list of
authors and which portions of the document they have contributed. We
have not yet considered technical aspects of generating this page, or
the exact output format. However, it could be similar to a table of
contents or index. As an initial mockup, consider this:
Authors and Contributors
Susan B. Anthony
Contributed By:
DHCP and Why You Should Care, page 12
ATM, the Silent Killer, page 54
Edited By:
PPP for Dog Owners, page 38
John Smith
Contributed By:
Encrypting Disks, page 19
Reinstalling FreeBSD, page 20
Recovering from Backup, page 20
Edited By:
When to Use Encryption, page 18
Rewritten By:
Pitfalls of Encryption, page 18
The format of the list and contents would vary depending on the media.
On the web, the titles would be links to the actual sections.
In both cases, individual authors would not be shown at the top of the
actual chapter or section in either HTML or PDF versions.
The goal is to make the contributor information more accurate, more
complete, and less distracting from content.
We welcome comments and suggestions on this proposal.
_______________________________________________
freebsd-doc@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-doc
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-doc-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
