Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 11:54:57 +0000 From: nclayton@lehman.com To: Jim Turk <jim_turk@ix.netcom.com> Cc: doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Joining the FreeBSD documentation project Message-ID: <19981208115457.W543@lehman.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.01.9812032225100.256-100000@localhost>; from Jim Turk on Thu, Dec 03, 1998 at 10:26:50PM -0700 References: <Pine.BSF.4.01.9812032225100.256-100000@localhost>
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Hi Jim,
[ I hope you don't mind, but I'm cc'ing this to the -doc mailing list.
This is one my messages that I want to end up in the archives ]
Sorry it's taken a few days for me to get back to you. I've been up to my
neck in converting the Handbook from LinuxDoc to DocBook, which is almost
complete.
Right,
On Thu, Dec 03, 1998 at 10:26:50PM -0700, Jim Turk wrote:
> I would like to contribute to the FreeBSD documentation project.
That's great.
> I have over fifteen years of software development experience with a number
> of different languages, operating systems, frameworks, and databases. I am
> familiar with HTML, LaTeX, and DocBook. I have subscribed to the
> documentation project mailing list.
Sounds fantastic. Subscribing to the mailing list was a good first step,
since that's where most announcements of things to do will happen.
Do you know how to use CVSup to keep your system up to date? In
particular, do you know how to keep an up to date copy of the documentation
repository? You'll probably need to be able to do that.
Your DocBook experience is particularly handy. If you can, please take a
look at doc/en/handbook/* in the CVS repository and let me know what you
think. I'm shortly going to be committing some changes so that this can
be used to generate PDF, RTF, PS, DVI, plain text, and HTML formats,
and the more people that can test this out the better.
> Please get me up to speed on your projects and let me know what needs to be
> done.
The current projects list is at
<URL:http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/current.html>;
Of those "Migrating the Handbook from LinuxDoc to DocBook" is almost
complete, and I'll be finishing that over the next fortnight. Volunteers
will be needed soon, mostly to download it and try and convert it to the
formats listed above, and confirm that it does all work.
I'm also working on the "This is how the Handbook is made" bit, although
this is turning more into a primer on how to work with the Doc. Proj. You
can find this at
<URL:http://www.freebsd.org/~nik/primer/index.html>;
which is my current draft, and changes almost daily. Comments gratefully
received.
I'm also looking at "Rewrite the Handbook". If you look at
<URL:http://www.freebsd.org/~nik/hb/>;
you'll see some of my comments relating to this (comments.txt) and my
proposed new layout for the Handbook (new-layout.txt). This is part of
a discussion that took place on -doc a few weeks back. I can forward you
the discussion if you'd like so you can see what happened. When I've
finished the DocBook conversion this is going to be my next big project
I think. Any comments you may have about my proposed new structure would
be very useful.
As you can see, we also need papers, tutorials, and sections in the
Handbook (although for the latter I'd ask that people hold off for two
weeks so I can finish the DocBook conversion).
If you've had to do anything under FreeBSD that was difficult, badly
documented, or non-intuitive, please feel free to provide documentation
> Also, provide information about policies, procedures, etc.
<URL:http://www.freebsd.org/docproj/submitting.html>; explains how to
submit documentation.
In generaly, if you've got new documentation to submit (or changes to
existing documentation) send it in with send-pr and it'll get committed
shortly (assuming there are no problems with this).
Do this a few times with no problems, and you'll almost certainly get asked
to become a committer, so you can commit your own changes. Note though
that committers are still encouraged to post their changes to the -doc
mailing list for review first.
Finally, two more things you might be interested in -- Wolfram Schneider
is the FreeBSD WebMaster, and you can always get in touch with him to see
if there's anything you can help with on the web side of things. His
e-mail address is wosch@freebsd.org. Also, have you seen DaemonNews? They're
at <URL:http://www.daemonnews.org/>. They're always on the lookout for
interesting BSD related articles, and I think they probably have one or
two permanent positions to fill as well.
Hope that's useful, and don't hesitate to get in touch. I'm happy to
get asked questions via the -doc mailing list -- traffic on that list is
quite light, and it helps get the answers out to a wider audience.
Nik
--
--+==[ Systems Administrator, Year 2000 Test Lab, Lehman Brothers, Inc. ]==+--
--+==[ 1 Broadgate, London, EC2M 7HA 0171-601-0011 x5514 ]==+--
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