Single sourced summary (was Re: Beta Release Notes)

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, 2008-03-04 at 17:22 -0800, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-03-03 at 19:50 +0000, Jonathan Roberts wrote:
> > On 01/03/2008, Marc Wiriadisastra <marc at mwiriadi.id.au> wrote:
> > >
> > > So whats going on with the single source summary then does that get
> > >  replaced with the beta release notes?
> 
> The Alpha/Beta release notes (single wiki page) are a subset of the
> SingleSourceSummary.
> 
> > I think so for now Marc...got my head in a big spin with the
> > SingleSourceSummary! Not sure anybody totally understands it actually,
> > though perhaps Karsten does and when he returns things may look
> > rosier. For now though, feel free to move content from SSS or add
> > stuff to the Release Notes :)
> 
> FWIW, Paul may also understand it, so we have being-hit-by-a-bus
> protection.
> 
> Does this explanation work? ::
> 
> Problem -- multiple summaries (relnotes, press releases, wiki pages,
> announcements, blog entries, articles) being written for a given release
> (Alpha, Beta, RC, Gold), all repeating work; no clear place to go for a
> good _summary_ of a given release.
> 
> Solution -- one single page that contains all the _potential_ content
> (source) for any one of the given target summaries.  Call this the
> SingleSourceSummary (SSS).
> 
> What the SSS is not -- 
> 
>         It is not a page meant to be read of itself:  two sections may
>         contain nearly identical content but be written in two styles,
>         such as "Big and happy!" and "Terse and descriptive".
>         
>         It does not require a consistent writing style for sections:
>         see above examples
>         
>         Stable:  expect it to change constantly; don't use it with an
>         Include() macro but copy/fork

This last item is where you lose me, but then again, I'm easily lost (as
anyone who's ridden in my car knows).  One of the goals of a SSS -- I
thought -- was to allow us to include the content elsewhere multiple
times, and not have to repeatedly check multiple pages to see that
they'd all been changed uniformly.  This was a big problem in the last
Release Notes cycle where a contributor made a change to one source
document, and I (as one of the release notes editors) had to carry that
change, and fix the resulting translation POT material, in several
documents.
        
> What the SSS is --
> 
>         A resource for *anyone* writing about a given Fedora release
>         
>         A collaboration amongst various parts of Fedora -- Marketing,
>         Docs, Rel Eng, etc.

+1 on this though.  I wonder whether it bears mentioning that a SSS is a
great place for interviewees to go for talking points.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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