[Bf-docboard] Documentation structure project

[Matt Ebb]

Hi all,

I've already sent a notice to the summer of docs mailing list, so I  
should mention it here too.

I'm going to be doing a project alongside the summer of docs, with  
which you guys should probably be aware, and hopefully work co- 
operatively keeping it in mind. I submitted a proposal for the summer  
of docs, regarding the structure and information design of the user  
manual, and although it falls outside of the 'blender basics  
bootcamp' scope, the judges agreed that it was valuable and important  
enough to make a special exception for it, and run the project  
additionally. You can see the proposal here: http:// 
mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Broken/SummerOfDocs2006Restructure

My project is partly concerned with some of the discussions that were  
on the bf-docboard mailing list late last year with the thread  
'restructuring the documentation'. The part of it that would  
influence the summer of docs most heavily is the idea of creating a  
stronger distinction between tutorial/theory and reference content. I  
go into more detail on this in the proposal, but basically, the  
mixture of tutorials and reference material in the Blender  
documentation is the source of many problems, and should be more  
cleanly separated (and cross-linked between).

Over the next days/weeks I'll be working on the points outlined in  
the proposal, starting now with analysing the current documentation  
and devising a template and list of items to include in it, for  
documenting tools and options. After that, I'll start a long trawl  
through the online manual, and will need to do a fair bit of editing  
to implement the template and get rid of excess text. I really don't  
want to step on anyone's feet here, so I'll try my best to stay in  
good contact (I'm usually in #blenderwiki when I'm online) and will  
try to keep up to date via the mailing list, so I don't interrupt  
other people's work.

Cheers

Matt