[Bf-docboard] Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58, Issue 3

[Roger Wickes]

Just to bring everyone up to date. Kaito, Mindrones, LetterRip, myself and others had quite a chat and discussion yesterday, and here is what we agreed. We will be on at 5:00pmEST / 2300 Italy time today as well if anyone wants to pitch in.

We agreed that for some time we will have to have two manuals available to users, 2.5x and 2.4x. How to best do that has been to topic of discussion. Here is what we are going to do. We are going to branch off a copy of the 2.4 manual and use it to make a 2.5 manual. During this time, we will keep the 2.4 manual as the official user manual. There are still missing features that need to be documented in English, and translators still need to make translated version updates, and all of that can continue unabated. At some point then, when the 2.5 manual is good enough, we will replace the trunk with this branch in such a way that the new 2.5 manual can also link to the 2.4 (more on that later). 

Why update the 2.4 manual when it's going to be replaced, you ask? Several reasons. First, this is going to be a year-long process or more until the 2.5 manual is ready. Second, in many cases the same feature function from 2.4 is going to be ported over to 2.5, so it needs to be documented anyway. Because it is so much easier to incrementally improve on something, starting to document a feature using the stable 2.4 will provide a good base to start with when documenting 2.5

Ton is going to make a copy of the current wiki User Manual and we will move that to Doc:2.4/Manual, and the main page of wiki.blender.org will point to that. Mindrones will move his Sandbox 2.5 (a copy of the table of contents) to Doc:2.5/Manual. Each page in the 2.5 will have a header that says if you are using the previous version of the software, click here for the relevant page in the old manual. This way, a user coming into "Frame Layout" topic will have the latest version guidance there, but if they are using the 2.4 version, the link will be right there and obvious, and nothing is lost.

If you look at the Doc:2.5/Manual page, all the red links will thus show unported 2.5 docs. An author can use that list to determine which page they want to port. To add docs for a new feature, they can edit that page and add in their link to the page.

To port, each wiki author will LOG IN and copy the text for a whole page from the 2.4 doc (edit->ctrl-a->ctrl-c) and click on the 2.5 link in the header, which will bring him/her to the appropriate Doc:2.5 page. If it doesnt exis't, create it and you will be in edit mode. Paste in the text from 2.4 and edit from there. The big thing will be tweaking the text to reflect any UI changes, and recapturing screenies. You CANNOT just click the image and upload a new version as we have done before, since that will also change the image that is used in the 2.4 manual. You will have to enter a new name, such as 2.5\Manual\Interface\Thumbgrip.jpg. Just for server management, I recommend you use a directory structure kind of name, rather than Manual-Interface-Thumbgrip-for-250.jpg. When you save your page, click on the broken image link, and you will be prompted to upload it. 

When you paste your text, which includes the nav bar header and footer, it should be a relative link and thus match up to the 2.5 structure and pages. We are going to test that today. 

Then, at some point, we will make the Doc:2.5 branch to be trunk by changing the main User Manual link, and the link in Blender help menu.

I will try to be on-line IRC #blenderwiki this month as we get all this set up. Our goal is to have everything set up this month so that conversion and editing can begin next month.
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Sent: Wed, November 4, 2009 6:00:01 AM
Subject: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58, Issue 3

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58, Issue 1 (Tom M)
   2. Re: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58, Issue 1 (mindrones)
   3. Re: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58, Issue 1 (Wahooney)
   4. Re: 2.5 Documentation (was: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58,    Issue
      1) (mindrones)
   5. Re: 2.5 Documentation (Wahooney)
   6. Re: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58, Issue 1 (mindrones)
   7. Re: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58, Issue 1 (Wahooney)
   8. Re: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58, Issue 1 (mindrones)
   9. Re: Bf-docboard Digest, Vol 58, Issue 1 (Wahooney)
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