[Bf-docboard] Special modeling techniques chapter

[Martin Kleppmann]

Hi Landis,

> P.S. AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

hey sorry, there's no way how the rest of the board can know how much you
are already familiar with these things. This whole business sounds pretty
complicated because there are a lot of abbreviations (XML, DocBook, CVS, ...) but
it's not that hard really.

I suggest you go to
http://download.blender.org/projects/docboard/daily-checkouts/
and download the newest file there. Those are TGZ archives, which may be
unfamiliar to you, but I believe WinZIP, WinRAR & co. can handle them. When
you've unpacked it, you'll have a directory structure containing mostly .xml and
graphics (.jpg, .png) files.

The graphics are easy - they are located in the gfx directory, sorted into
subdirectories for each chapter. You can view and edit them with any graphics
program. The XML files are a bit more tricky... they contain the actual text
of the documentation (mostly in subdirectories of the chapters directory).

XML is a text file format, and looks quite similar to HTML. (Now I don't
know if you're familar with that... please say how much detail you would like to
hear.) The basic idea is that you describe the structure of the document
(what is a section, what is a section's title, what is a paragraph, where should
a figure be added, etc.), and somebody else then takes care of what it looks
like in the end. It takes a bit of new thinking to get used to not seeing
the changes you make graphically, especially if you are used to WYSIWYG text
editors.

You can view and edit XML files with any text editor you like; if you use
Windows, you may have a problem if the files are in Unix/Linux format. So if
the text looks like a lot of chaos, try an editor that can handle Unix files
too, e.g. Texturizer (http://www.texturizer.net/ - it's ugly shareware, but it
works quite well). When you see what the XML source looks like, you'll get
the idea quickly.

Now just to explain a few of these cryptic abbreviations...

DocBook is a standard system for creating technical documentation. The
version that is used here uses XML as a base language, that means the file format
is XML text, and the set of tags used and their meanings are supplied by
DocBook, e.g. <section>...</section>, <para>...</para> etc. There's a brief
introduction on http://download.blender.org/documentation/html/x4848.html

CVS is the system that allows several developers to work on the same files
without immediately getting into a mess if two people change the same file. It
keeps an up-to-date version of all files on blender.org and generates the
"daily checkouts" I recommended you to download. CVS is a bit difficult,
though, so it will do perfectly well if you edit the XML files (warn the DocBoard
before you start making changes, so that there are no conflicts) and post them
to the mailing list.

> Thank you all for allowing me to waste your time.

No way... and don't panic :)

Martin

-- 
+++ martin kleppmann +++ martin@kleppmann.de +++

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