[Bf-docboard] Plans for the Future

[Stefano Selleri]

>DocBook can look however you want it to online. I think you guys maybe
>don't really understand it.
We do... I know it can look whatever you want online, but there is noone
here able to tweak the CSS and have it look anyhow except default!

>DocBook is just a way of marking up data.
>It's not a program, or something to install.
True

>I offered a month ago or so to work on improved XSLT style
>sheets to make the online documentation more presentable, but didn't
>get a single reply. (And won't have time for anything extensive until
>August or so)
That looks strange, I remember that e-mail. And I believe to have replied..
well...
anyway, It would be interesting to have docbook look better, if people would
write doc. The real problem is that people do not write...

>The PHP or MySQL online documentation are based on DocBook, and both
>allow user comments on the pages and are formatted very nicely.
>Of course all PHP and MySQL users are inherently technical types, and
>learning a few XML tags is not something dauunting preventing them
>from contributing.
This is what I believed too.... but it proved wrong.

>I think DocBook is particularly nice for managing a decent size
>documentation project with multiple contributors. It inherently forces
>some standardization, and works nicely with CVS.
I agree

>And not every
>contributor NEEDs to know DocBook. If someone wants to contribute a
>section, they can just send their contribution however they like, and
>then an editor puts it in the actual documentation. Content
>submissions should ideally be reviewed by an editor anyway.
Sadly I cannot do all this work, nor can eric AFAIK, we need contributions
to be easily integrated.


>OpenOffice I think is a bad idea. Can it even support books made from
>multiple files and cross references between them?
I tend to agree.

>Wikis are probably the next best choice to DocBook of what has been
>suggested, but in my experience they tend to be a bit of a pain to
>practically navigate due to the loose design. But it is easy to
>contribute.  I
Yes, the lack of structure is what bothers me most.

>Are there any cases of successful software documention using Wikis?
Yafray has...

>Does the docboard have defined roles like Editor in Cheif, section
>editors, etc.? (Sorry, I'm relatively new to the BF documentation
>efforts) Maybe setting up titles and defined roles world help more
>than using different technologies. Editors have CVS access. Everyone
>else works through them. Editors have roles - i.e. managing sections,
>or consistency, or screen shots, etc.
We have :)

Stefano