Documentation project status

[Karsten Wade]

On Sun, 2003-12-21 at 06:47, Nick wrote:
> Hello everyone, I looking to help out where I can with the documentation
> project.  However, I have a few questions which I could not find answers
> to:

Sorry about the lack of visible FAQ; working on that one over the
holidaze.

The last version was sent to the list at:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-docs-list/2003-November/msg00161.html

> 1. Are sections on the project site the only ones being pursued?  
> The main site shows --
> Tammy Fox: Installation Guide
> Paul W. Frields: TBD
> Luiz Rocha: Configuring and Using PDAs

The FAQ page has some which are more current - here is the excerpt of
what has been suggested and/or is being worked on:

  * Installing an SSH server with public/private key authentication
  * Configuring and using digital cameras
  * Anaconda documentation (in process)
  * Security considerings in installation
  * Security other (by topic, i.e. filesystems, host, etc.)
  * Configuring PDA

> 2. For sections underway, what are their status?

AFAIK:

  * The Anaconda group has been working, but there hasn't been a status
update posted here.

  * There have been minor updates to the Fedora Doc Guide
  
  * Biggest activity so far has been with translation, both of
documentation and software.

Not a huge amount, see next reply for some reasons.

> 3. Are there any priorities or road maps for this project? 

> 4. The main Red Hat site already has some great documentation which is
> largely applicable to Fedora, is anybody "converting" or "borrowing"
> from this to get started? (better yet, are we allowed to do so, legally)

Replying to both 3. and 4. together.  The following is basically my
surmised opinion, so don't be overly surprised if I get a few facts
wrong. :)

The focus for the Fedora docs project is primarily on tutorials and
how-to documentation (fact).  Our experience building and supporting the
enterprise product level documentation for Red Hat has shown that it is
a truly more-than-full-time job (fact).  Not expecting that level of
commitment from the open source community, Tammy (wisely) decided to
have the Fedora documentation be of the easier to produce and maintain
tutorial variety (guess).  The sole exception is the Installation Guide
and this project's Documentation Guide (fact).

The content of the RHEL and RHL documents is covered under the OPL; you
can check the license for any doc by looking at the legalnotice.html
page, accessible from the ToC of any document, e.g.:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/admin-guide/legalnotice.html

IMHO, the conversion project would be pretty big to perform - the SGML
would need refactoring into XML, and all of the content manually checked
against the current Fedora Core release.  Considering the rapid release
cycle of Fedora Core, it will be hard to keep the documents up to date. 
Again, this is based on our experience doing the same thing for RHL --
with that 6 month release cycle, a team of full-time doc writers was
regularly busy more than 60 hours a week to produce the doxen on time.

HTH.  I'll see that the FAQ addresses these kind of concerns when we
post it Real Soon Now(TM).

hoppy holidaze - Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade   :      Tech Writer, RHCE     :  o: +1.831.466.9664
kwade at redhat.com : http://rhea.redhat.com/ :   c: +1.831.818.9995
         Red Hat Applications : WAF, CMS, Portal Server         
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