Welcome to the second issue of the GNOME Documentation Project Status Report. Things have been very busy in the GDP lately, especially on the help system development side. Several GDP members have been working hard to ensure that we can view SGML documents in GNOME 1.4. Several other developers including some new contributors from Sun are working to get the Contents List, Table of Contents, and Indexing working. And as always, numerous document authors have been working hard on various GNOME documents.
Kevin Breit has updated his documentation bug list, which is now in HTML format. We need to get all these bugs squashed well in advance of GNOME 1.4.
GNOME Stock Ticker is now part of gnome-applets. A new GDP member, Gilles Robitaille, is writing the user manual.
The Sawfish capplet (the part of the GNOME Control Center which configures Sawfish) needs docs. If you are looking for a new document to work on or you have been considering joining the GDP but weren't sure what to do, consider working on this.
The GNOME developer web pages now have a number of new links to various web pages and tutorials. Both new and experienced GNOME developers will be particularly interested in the links to George Lebl's excellent GNOME tutorials on the Linux section of IBM developerWorks. You can also view a full list of George's developerWorks articles by selecting "Lebl" from their author-sorted index.
Several developers from Sun have joined the GDP to help us make the GNOME help system the best help system anywhere. Right now they are working on adding the Contents List and Table of Contents to Nautilus' help browser components. If you see Laszlo Kovacs, Mark Murnane, or Mary Dwyer, give them a hearty welcome.
Telsa Gwynne has written a very nice GNOME User FAQ. This was quite an accomplishment, and I'm sure GNOME users and anybody who wants to learn more about GNOME will find this a valuable resource. If you have any suggestions for improvements, send them to Telsa.
Havoc Pennington and Dan Mueth have written up a GNOME Foundation FAQ to help answer many of the most common questions people have about the GNOME Foundation. Send suggestions to the authors.
Telsa Gwynne and Eric Baudais are working on a new GNOME Developer FAQ. If you have any suggestions for questions or you are willing to help them write answers to questions, send them an email.
Ali Abdin, John Fleck, and Thomas Canty have been working hard to track down and fix problems with gnome-db2html2 so that Nautilus 1.0/GNOME 1.4 can display SGML/DocBook documents. (It converts them from SGML/XML to HTML on-the-fly.) This will be a big improvement over writing SGML docs and then shipping them in HTML format as we did in the past. It will potentially allow us to do things like cross-referencing and extracting the TOC (Table of Contents) and Index from documents to put this information directly into Nautilus. (Christopher Gabriel and the Sun developers are working on making these features a reality.)
We are looking for volunteers for the following tasks:
We need people to work on the following:
Fix doc bugs remaining from GNOME 1.2 release. (Documentation bug list in HTML format)
Test Nautilus-based help system. Please send all bug reports to Eazel's Bugzilla server. (Note: This involves building Nautilus out of CVS.) (Contact: Ali Abdin)
Improve subject tree for a Contents list which includes all types of documentation on a system.
Coordinate an update of the developer documention in the architecture section of the developer web pages. This information should also be placed into a stand-alone DocBook document which we can distribute under the FDL. (Contact Dan Mueth for more information.)
We need developers to work on the following:
Update GNOME technology descriptions in the Architecture and Design part of the developer web pages.
Write API docs. (High priority)
Write/maintain developer tutorials and white papers.
We need document authors to work on the following documents:
Sawfish capplet help docs.
GNOME Icon Edit manual.
Manuals for any games in gnome-games which lack them. (See the DocTable for a complete list.)
Help docs for internal GNOME widgets (file picker, font picker, color selector, print preview, etc.).
We are looking for volunteers to maintain the following documents:
(none right now)
This is a list of documents which have recently been updated or finished. It is meant primarily to help translators, but may also be of use to package maintainers and users.
gtcd (CD Player)
Gnibbles
Mahjongg
gmix (Audio Mixer)
Gnumeric
sound-monitor applet (Sound Monitor)
This is a list of documents which have been finished for a while, but are still good candidates for translation. They are sorted by package.
gnome-utils (essentially all apps: gcalc, gcharmap, gsearchtool, gdict, gfloppy, gstripchart, gtt, gless, guname, gw, gshutdown, idetool, gfontsel, gcolorsel, gdiskfree)
gnome-core (Panel, all applets in gnome-core, gnome-terminal)
gnome-applets (almost all of them)
gnome-games (Iagno, Aisleriot)
bug-buddy
gtop
Glade FAQ and Glade Quickstart Guide
The GNOME Documentation Project Status Report is a periodic report describing the recent events of the GDP (GNOME Documentation Project) and the status of various documents. I hope that these reports will be useful for GDP members, translators, developers, and potential GDP contributors. If you have any submissions or suggestions for these Status Reports, please send them to <d-mueth@uchicago.edu>.
The goal of the GDP (GNOME Documentation Project) is to provide a complete documentation system for GNOME. The main part of this is writing and maintaining application manuals for all applets and applications in the main GNOME distribution and GNOME Office. The GDP also writes other user documentation such as application hints (a la gnome-hint), pop-up help (coming soon), the GNOME User FAQ, and the GNOME User's Guide. The GDP also writes and maintains developer documentation such as API documents, White Papers, and developer tutorials. These developer documents are generally written by developers who work with the GDP since it requires technical expertise on the particular topic. And lastly, the GDP, along with various GNOME hackers, is responsible for designing the different components of the GNOME help system, such as the tutorial/demo wizard (coming soon), pop-up help (coming soon), and the documentation browsing system.
The GDP is always looking for new volunteers to write documentation or help in other ways. If you are interested in joining or contacting the GDP, visit the GDP web page or chat with us on IRC at #docs on irc.gnome.org.