[Bf-docboard] About MediaWiki and DocBook

[stefano.selleri at unifi.it]

Hi!

As some of you might already know I'm on a beach, (unfortunately it
rains now :( ) So I won't be much on-line this week.

I saw a bunch of messages this weekend and could only quickly browse
them, but there are very clear posts from Bart and Ton making the
point.

As I already stated in chatand I believe here too docbook has the
advantage of being well structured, but this is the only one, it is
clumsy because we need CVS to take account of change and storage, and I
need to upload nearly 40Mb of stuff to  publish changes... 40Mb for
*each* version. There are 4 versions (.html, .pdf, .zip and
.tar.gz)Furtermore the PDF version is really useless, so that is not
something to be maintained.

As Ton clearly stated the production of a guide is anyway quite
intependent from the tool used to create,maintain and publish the doc,
as long as the content are well structured anc can be easily retrieved.

I'll try to be again online soon :)

Stefano



>- DocBoard mission statement
>The docboard could focus on the following two issues:
>1) Make available the standard end-user documentation on Blender, in an  
>open online (browsable) and offline (downloadable) format.
>2) Organize an accessible documentation project, to enable motivated  
>authors to contribute as efficient as possible.
>As sub-target you could add;
>3) Format the documentation in such a way that third parties (or  
>Blender Foundation) can use it for creating printed books.
>
>- Other formats...?
>The discussion to switch to (for example) MediaWiki should be about:
>1) What format gives best online and offline access to Blender docs?
>2) What format pleases motivated (active contributing) authors best?
>
>A decision on this should really be limited to the people who actually  
>did write a lot of Blender documentation in the past. We need people  
>who love to work on docs, and are movitvated to continue working on it  
>in the future too. :)
>
>-Ton-
>
>
>>
>>> I was under the impression the printed manual was a source of money  
>>> for the foundation, rather than a downloadable using bandwidth, I  
>>> guess coming from your mouth Bart, you would know better than I, so I  
>>> stand corrected about print being more important than web.
>> Actually, it's both. Ton is paying a share of the bills with the sales  
>> of the Blender Guide. On the other side of the equation, having good  
>> online documentation stimulates the growth of Blender which, in turn,  
>> will also generate more revenue (either through the e-shop or in other  
>> ways).
>>
>> After thinking about this discussion this afternoon it sounds like the  
>> Docboard group needs to develop a vision and a mission statement. I  
>> usually dislike this crap, especially when my boss starts talking  
>> about it. Today though I think it would give us a lot of guidance,  
>> knowing that all our actions are contributing towards our vision and  
>> that they are in line with our mission statement. I guess the Docboard  
>> vision/mission statement (and that of the Webcontent and other groups  
>> too!) should be derived from the Blender Foundation vision/mission  
>> statement. 
>>
>> Maybe this would help us formulate our goals and, ultimately, the way  
>> we want to work and the tools we want to use?
>>
>> Bart
>>
>> (I'll go back to being a webmonkey now ;-)
>>
>>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>--
>Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
>http://www.blender.org
>
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