Our Discussion on Fedora-docs [Fwd: Re: Fedora Documentation Search Engine]

[Bryan Clark]

Hi ~

Just some more questions to clarify.

On Sat, 2005-01-29 at 06:32 -0800, Karsten Wade wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-01-29 at 06:35 -0500, Bryan Clark wrote:
> > What type of person do you think is looking for this information (a
> > developer, an office worker, a broker?).
> 
> Any end-user on the system.

So any user of our desktop or workstation product needs to be able to
find this information in order to be able to use it?

> > What is this person trying to accomplish by searching this information?
> > Why do they need it?
> 
> Currently, the best way to search for Fedora documentation is via
> google.com.  That in fact is how I search Red Hat docs, using
> site:redhat.com.

Just a thought, but would it be a good idea to integrate Red Hat docs on
the web with Fedora.  That would mean there is one less indexing program
that possibly destroys my system (updatedb) and less packaging /
development work.  Although if this is an incremental updater it should
use less resources.

You could still allow for people to install the docs locally, but
perhaps we could integrate an online search system for everyone that Red
Hat indexes. 

> Right now, if you install locally all the documentation available, you
> might have everything you'd be searching Google for but are unable to
> find locally.  Package docs go into /usr/share/doc and the man pages,
> Red Hat docs packages also go into /usr/share/doc and may have an entry
> in the 'Foot/'Hat menu.  Fedora docs are small enough that an Everything
> install _could_ include docs packages.  That is a *tonne* of local,
> online documentation.
> 
> All of this is nearly impossible to search through without an index and
> search tool.

What specific information do you find when you search for this?  Help on
using an application?  What application is that?

> > Assuming they need it.  How are they going to search for this
> > information?  Yelp?  Web Browser?  Something else?  Are the mechanisms
> > for searching and reviewing this type of information already built into
> > those things?
> 
> IMO, Yelp.  We need to settle on a common help interface and (ab)use it.
> 
> For example, a document on using kickstart to automate installation
> might be at the forefront when Yelp is called from system-config-
> kickstart.  If an indexer can do this well, it seems better than hand
> coding docs to be associated with certain apps and actions.

Context sensitive help would be a great thing and I know the Yelp
maintainer (Shaun M) is interested in doing that but short on time.

> > If we had more of an overview of how this project is going to help
> > people we could possibly look at a way of integrating it's functionality
> > better into our system.  Hopefully we then won't be just adding another
> > piece to the stack of tools we have, but an answer to a problem people
> > are having.
> 
> I definitely think integrating indexed documentation into Yelp is a good
> idea for corporate-type end-users.  People _used_ to use the local help
> system more extensively, until Internet search engines proved more
> useful.  The downside of relying upon the Internet is, what do you do
> when the doc you need is the one that will get your networking going
> again?  Better hope you have a second machine that has connectivity, or
> that you know how to dig through /usr/share/doc by hand.

Ok.  This sounds really interesting, I think I'm getting a bigger
picture of what's happening.  Maybe with a little more clarification I
can see what we're aiming at.

Thanks,
~ Bryan