[Bf-education] Blender Reference

[Pep Ribal]

I don't think it's a question of the number of writers... It's more a 
question to organize the work at a similar level of how the developers 
work. I would volunteer to turn my project into a community based one, 
but as I insisted, a roadmap should be defined, a scope should be 
defined, and leave as less as possible to improvisation... I'd really 
love to be on board of a really structured plan.

At least I think that things should be discussed to see if it is agreed 
(or perhaps not) that the documentation work should be reorganized.

I'm volunteering as a writer if we could define the work to do as a real 
project with definite goals. If needed I can help with organization as 
well, as I have many ideas which perhaps could be useful.

I'm posting this message to the docboard as well. I think that this 
topic even fits more there.

Regards.

Pep.

El 20/12/11 10:31, Knapp escribió:
> I made a post today with about the same idea in it. I agree with you
> strongly. We really need at least as many manual writers as programs
> just to keep up! Then there are all those undocumented bits that are
> out there for example,  light field, or plenoptic, photography tools
> in blender. You would never know they were there but I asked one day
> on the dev email list. I made me really sit up and wonder what else
> was out there in blender! I think writing your own book is the wrong
> way to go. What we need is a really strong manual writers group.
>
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Pep Ribal<pepribal at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I haven't posted anything yet, because I feel that my vision on all this
>> might be a bit off of what it seems to be the way of action you all are
>> pointing out. However I feel that I must share my ideas. Actually I
>> wasn't unsure if I had to post it or in bf-docboard... However if you
>> think I also should post in the docboard list, tell me and I will do it too.
>>
>> Last 2 days I've been having interesting conversations in the IRC (with
>> darKoram and greylica), and I think I should share my thoughts with the
>> rest of you.
>>
>> The thing began 2 months ago. I've been thinking on becoming BFCT for a
>> while, and finally I decided to go for it. However I find that the major
>> problem for someone that wants to learn Blender in depth is the lack of
>> an in-depth up-to-date Blender reference. The wiki can definitely be a
>> good place to give you good hints, but I think it's far away from being
>> a complete reference site... To make things "worse", development goes so
>> fast that documentation gets outdated easily.
>>
>> I contributed in a few places in the wiki manual (and years ago I worked
>> on the manual translation to spanish), but I think that it is currently
>> not the resource (at least) I need.
>>
>> So I boldly decided to create my own Blender reference. My idea is to
>> make a "dissection" of Blender, trying and testing every bit and piece
>> of it, and to slowly create a brief reference (in Spanish at the moment)
>> documents for myself which I could use in the future to make video
>> tutorials, lectures and so on. I think that such a reference would be
>> the perfect basis for: official manual, tutorials and video tutorials,
>> examinations, courses, and a long etcetera.
>>
>> So these 2 months I've been "touching everything" in Blender in all the
>> possible ways and forms. Result has been I start to learn a lot; at the
>> same time I've done a lot of bug reporting (as I push Blender in all
>> ways, and I find many little things), but it's hard, as ther is not a
>> source of complete knowledge about all Blender features.
>>
>> The problem: it's very sluggish. That is Herculean task for a single
>> person. However, I'm decided to continue no matter how long it takes.
>> And it's gonna take me ages.
>>
>> With my recent conversations on the IRC, I would like to know if perhaps
>> my personal project could be integrated into the Blender community. My
>> goal atm is not certification, or exams, or whatever. I'm thinking on
>> the long run: I am for a complete in-depth up-to-date Blender reference.
>> Either made by me, or rather turned into an official project. Then, I
>> can start thinking again on my BFCT, because I will have good material.
>>
>> If it worked ok, developers could even forget about documenting, except
>> for a) the release logs and b) the weekly meetings.
>>
>> As I took a master certificate on project management time ago, I'm very
>> aware that in every project planning is more than 50%. If a good project
>> charter and plan could be designed (with all key elements of project
>> planning or similar), and if enough people could commit, I would
>> definitely change the approach from a personal project to a community one.
>>
>> The plan should integrate: writers, reference breakdown and assignments,
>> regular meetings with the developers (let's say once a week?),
>> schedules, definite milestones, resource management, scope, and so on.
>>
>> Regarding meetings with coders, I've been bothering them a bit those
>> past days, but I think that "official" meetings would give writers much
>> more confidence that their questions will be answered "this week".
>>
>> I think I've written too much. Well, I don't know if someone will think
>> I'm saying a single interesting word, but at least I could share my
>> thoughts. Let me know what you think.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Pep.
>>
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