what next?

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 18:46 +0000, Dimitris Glezos wrote:
> Karsten Wade wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-11-06 at 20:28 +0100, Bela Pesics wrote:
> >> [...]
> >> I can also imagine using http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/ for something. I
> >> am curious if the referenced materials could be used to put together a
> >> handbook without double efforts in a efficient way.
> > 
> > [...]
> > But ... hmm ... there has been discussion in the past of having a
> > kbase.fedoraproject.org that is a stand-alone knowledgebase.  If we
> > opened it to all Fedora account holders and had kbase articles queued
> > for this team to edit (part of a workflow), maybe we could build up
> > something very useful.  I could see many discussions on e.g. fedora-list
> > or fedoraforum.org being worth migrating into a kbase article.
> > 
> > So, this is an idea to follow, but not sure if we can directly connect
> > such live content into a handbook.  Certainly as a source for
> > inspiration, such as finding out the most commonly asked questions to
> > give an idea of what people need us to write about.
> 
> So, as I see it we need a balance between a solid solution like 
> "everything in Docbook" or a usable solution like "everything in the 
> wiki or in a kbase". With the first approach 
> *publication/maintainability* is easier and more simple but with the 
> second the actual *writing* is. 

Don't confuse writing with tagging.  You can *write* in plain old ASCII
for that matter.  DocBook tagging can be done by someone else who knows
how, if a contributor doesn't.  (But DocBook is very easy to learn for
anyone who wants to.)

> Second has advantages like better 
> monitoring/live results, but with the cost of less functionality and a 
> cost overhead for producing the final form.

The former advantage is erased by a decent content management system,
and the disadvantages then topple this option.  There's a reason the
entire FOSS world, more or less, chooses DocBook rather than one of the
various flavors of wiki markup.

> With the MoinDocbook we try to do a little of both but it seems that the 
> transition from wiki to Docbook is not as easy nor as solid as it sounds 
> (correct me if I'm wrong here). The problem could be that we are trying 
> to maintain the content in two forms instead of one with just two 
> front-ends (the web one and the cvs-checkout/emacs one).

Wiki -> DocBook will never approach greatness because there's no way to
map the tagging.  Sad but true. :-)

> I'll throw another idea on the table (probably a bit bold too), since 
> now it's the best time to do it.
> 
> Maybe a live web front-end to the actual Docbook code in CVS/SVN would 
> be a better solution? Let's say, we can see live the Docbook results and 
> edit individual paragraphs, with each edit resulting in CVS commits? If 
> we hook this up with the accounts system, everybody will be able to chip 
> in like with the Beats system, and the result would be maintainable with 
> the power of Docobok/CVS (no need to convert). I searched a bit and 
> found a project that does exactly that:
> 
>   http://doc-book.sourceforge.net
> 
> I don't know if it's worth it (the customizing etc.), but it could be a 
> candidate to substitute the wiki <-> docbook conversion. It is written 
> in PHP, it uses xmltproc and friends, it seems to support multiple 
> languages, content approving, intermediate docbook-focused syntax (or 
> docbook). Last update was 1.5 year ago.

(1) PHP will, AFAICT, never be used on fedoraproject.org.  The admins
have spoken.

(2) Even if (1) were not true, I'm not excited about diverting energy
that would be better spent on figuring out a Plone-based solution.  Yes,
there are some Plone issues still being worked, like authentication, but
it's the future.  Let's embrace it.

Let me go out on a limb here and make a suggestion:  If anyone here is
interested in furthering our next publishing platform -- LEARN PLONE!  I
don't mean say, "Yes, we should learn Plone."  (Or worse yet, "Plone
should be learned by someone.")  I mean, "Learn Plone.  Do it.  DO IT."

/me finishes attack on passive voice   :-D

> Actually, a month ago a similar discussion was made on Mark 
> Shuttleworth's weblog under a post named "Writing a book collaboratively":
> 
>    http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/59
> 
> It seems that the above project was proposed as a good candidate. So, 
> maybe this could be a good candidate for a joint project between the 
> Ubuntu and Fedora teams? :)

See above.  Joint projects good, PHP... not so much.  (In fairness,
we've looked at this exact solution before.)

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
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