discuss: Processes was Re: Fedora Multimedia Installation HOWTO
Subject:
Re: Processes was Re: Fedora Multimedia Installation HOWTO
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
7 Feb 2004 10:00:58 -0000
Message-Id: <20040207095946.GA7139@lafn.org>
On Sat, Feb 07, 2004 at 02:00:43AM -0500, Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:
>
> [This final note is NOT in reply to Rodolfo's email. It because I still
> pissed off at David's original off-list email and Mr. Raymond's statement
> that policies set in place in 2001 in the Reviewer HOWTO were somehow
> "invented" while he "wasn't looking."] I don't really care if I sound like
> I'm being emotional. I am /hurt/ by the fact that I spent EIGHT MONTHS
> working on the Author Guide and David feels he can dismiss the document
> as "waste of time"--without even bothering to look at the changes that
> were made. In my mind you shouldn't be staff if you're not willing to read
> the policies and procedures of your own organization.
I think I know what these are without reading it :-)
I didn't say it was a "waste of time" for someone to read. But I
thought it was a waste of time for me to read since I didn't care to
learn a lot about DocBook, etc. However, I've recently been reading
some stuff about DocBook (Raymond's HOWTO, etc.) so I can better
criticize it.
I do think that the Author Guide is useful to people willing to take a
lot of time to learn DocBook, etc. and also to learn some tips about
writing. But we need to have an optional one-page guide to get people
started fast. Unless they already know DocBook it would be much faster
for them to start with LinuxDoc. Anyway, I guess I should read the
Author Guide now that you've made such an issue of it. If you had just
kept the discussion off-list like I wanted, then I wouldn't need to read
it :-)
But I seriously think that two things have really hurt the LDP: DocBook
and the Author Guide. And the two are related. The Author Guide
formerly presented only DocBook and treated LinuxDoc like it didn't
exist. Thanks to Emma Jane Hogbin for fixing this. There's a Russian
word for a situation that means that someone did something that was
well-intended but turned out to be counterproductive (I've studied
Russian). It isn't that writing the Author-Guide in itself was
counterproductive but the fact that every new person that comes to help
write for us is immediately referred to the long Guide and sometimes to
DocBook. This is very intimidating to new authors. If they go the the
webpage where we ask for help, they are also referred to the Author
Guide.
I've written a one-page guide and a mini-HOWTO on LinuxDoc. There's
also the old one-page guide (I mean about 65 lines). I'll post these
here later. I wanted Emma Jane Hogbin to change the Author Guide and
didn't want to bother the mailing list. I started reading the Author
Guide once but stopped when I got into the complexity of DocBook. Well,
I guess I should try again since it's now in the Appendix (and since
I've been looking into the DocBook tool-chain).
> I really would encourage people to read the revised Author Guide. It
> won't take as long as you think (and you can skip all of the technical
> stuff as it has been moved to Appendices). Based on off-list comments
> I've received I don't think people understand exactly how different
> the Guide is now...the least you can do is scan the table of contents
> so that you don't make stupid comments to me off-list about how shit
> the document is.
Thanks for improving it. However, since I never read the old Guide I'll
have no way of knowing how much better it is. But the way to get new
authors is to make it easy for them and that's why we need something
a lot shorter than the Author Guide.
David Lawyer
