* Phil Bull: > I think a lot of the problem here is conflicting ideas (or just > confusion) about what the Ubuntu documentation should 'be'. What purpose > should it fulfil?
No, I don't think it's that serious. > If we look at the extreme of having 'no overlap', the Ubuntu > documentation would just be a front page with links to everyone else's > documentation. Every app on the desktop has its own documentation - do > we just glue that together? If so, what is the Doc Team for? There are two points here why I don't think we're as far apart as you think. First, gluing is a much more important task that you're giving credit for: most of the existing documentation we provide is material for which there is no upstream material. Many programs provide manuals which we can use in the help system, and Second, I think you're underestimating the word "link", as if it's something insignificant which makes the documentation poorer than if we wrote the documentation ourselves. A link is the way that a user navigates from one help screen to another; it doesn't mean that either the source page or the target page is less valuable as a result. All of our own documents are arrived at using a link. Look at it as integration of upstream material. I'm pretty sure you'll agree that where such integration is appropriate, we should do it - that's all we're saying. > Also, Yelp is incompatible with many upstreams. That's a different question. Yelp is designed to be able to read most formats used for documentation: we should encourage upstreams where possible to use such formats. Where they don't, there is nothing we can do about that. > Re:[1] - Pidgin doesn't have to be connected to the Internet to be useful. See the use cases in my comment above. Noted; although I'd regard those use cases as quite rare. Anyway, it's not a huge point. > Re:[2] - I don't know about that. If there were tools in existence already to do that job then it would be less time consuming. Otherwise, we'd have to develop those tools... Of course. There are some basic html to docbook tools around; and copying/pasting and tidying up the code can be pretty quick. Most of all, encouraging (and helping) upstreams to provide desktop documentation is going to be highly beneficial, because it will work for all distributions. Matt -- http://www.mdke.org gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF -- Instant messaging documentation doesn't cover useful topics https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/128384 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
