Using elvis?

Karsten Wade kwade at redhat.com
Fri Jul 30 06:34:50 UTC 2004


On Thu, 2004-07-29 at 22:38, Colin Charles wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We've been talking about public CVS for far too long, and I think the
> longer we wait, the longer Fedora Docs becomes less & less relevant

Sorry if I'm being dense, but I don't understand how having public CVS
resolves the problems of Fedora docs?  I see a lack of content, some
broken processes, and barriers to entry, but I don't see how public CVS
resolves that.

> Keeping in mind that the barrier of entry is already relatively high
> (you need to know DocBook, you need to use Emacs, etc...), this makes
> folk move closer to creating docs on 3rd party sites

Agreed about the difficulties.  To address this, Mark Johnson mentioned
the idea of doing a Fedora Docs Quick Start Guide.  He would make it a
focused tutorial, using his psgmlx mode for Emacs, which gives a
friendly and useful XML editing environment.  Would that be helpful?

Still, Emacs is not required, and there have been plenty of offers to
convert and actual conversions from just about any source document into
a Fedora doc.  The contribution of content is what is lacking.

Going back to the CVS, I don't see how giving write access to people who
are having difficulties learning the tools is helpful? 

OTOH, giving write access to some of the people who a) know the tools,
and b) have demonstrated their ability to submit good code, that would
be a great thing.

> Why can't we use elvis.redhat.com ? Anaconda, translations and so on
> happen at elvis, so why not fedora docs? This will mean external
> contributors *can* commit to cvs as well

This is an interesting end-run idea.  Speaking for myself, my
inclination is not to create a parallel system to what is being worked
on and waited for.

My email about what content is actually ready for CVS and posting on
fedora.redhat.com/docs is very relevant to your question.  Once we know
exactly what there is to post and put in CVS, then we have something to
agitate about.  Deliver the content, and we'll find a way to get it
posted.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, Tech Writer
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