[reportlab-users] manual proposal

[adam hyde]

hey Andy,


Many thanks for the feedback. Your concerns about coherent docs being
produced by the community is understandable but unwarranted. I suggest
you look at the manuals on FLOSS Manuals, for example this:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/sugar

was written by about 30 people - not the developers, but a community of
people with an interest in creating clear documentation.

If there is anyone that is interested in writing a community generated
user manual then the FLOSS Manuals repository is available to you. I
will set up a manual if there is someone that wishes to commit to taking
the lead in writing it.

adam




On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 17:05 +0100, Andy Robinson wrote:

> 2008/10/20 adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net>:

> > however the manuals would be hosted on the flossmanuals site as that is

> > the toolset and the focus of the community.

> >

> > if you want the manuals on your own server then it would be best to go

> > with the mediawiki option.

> 

> We've discussed this internally and decided that we really want to keep

> our documentation in our repository.  Right now it can all be built and

> kept in sync with the code, and we already had plans to make this

> better, and to put it up in HTML and allow comments and so on using

> a Django-powered site we are building.

> 

> Also, we want to improve the PDF output to showcase more advanced

> features that only we have - for example, the first place anyone is likely

> to see a really easy-to-use table of contents widget should be in our

> manuals, as we'll be needing it.  This will let folks like you, MediaWiki and

> others pick up new features from us easily in future.

> 

> Tools are not the problem.  We'd much rather hack on tools than

> try to rewrite tutorial content - just like everyone else here ;-)  I am

> also not convinced yet that the "community" would produce coherently

> edited manuals.  Aiming for the odd rewritten section and a mechanism

> to collect and tag snippets and sample scripts (like ActiveState or

> DjangoSnippets) seems more realistic to me, and that's where we

> hope to be in 3 months time.

> 

> Many thanks for the offers of help, though, and I wish you the best.

> We're also hoping to put up some pages of projects using ReportLab,

> and both FLOSSManuals and MediaWiki are great examples.

> 

> 

> - Andy

-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
http://www.flossmanuals.net