Hi, umm, D@7@k|N&. (Perhaps you should consider using a real name, I feel really silly typing that!) :-) I'll break out answers below that will hopefully be a little helpful for you. Oh, in the future, could you be so kind as to *not* use HTML in your posts to the list? Case in point, your post comes out on my screen so small I can barely read it. It's considered a "best practice" to use plain text only for e-mail to the list. Sorry for the etiquette detour there, and I apologize to all if Evolution mangles this reply into HTML. On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 20:36, D@7@k|N& wrote: > OKâ.so I have a few questions, that (I know) have probably been > answered a thousand times, and the poor posters were flamed > continuously for days on end (OKâ.maybe Iâm a member of too many > mailing lists ;). Anyhow, Iâm curious how you guys work on > documentation projects individually. Do you write in your favorite > text editor, then pass the subject matter to your editor to parse it > into XML? You can do this if XML is beyond your means. But frankly, if you're comfortable writing HTML or using "styles" in your favorite word processor, Docbook XML is really not any harder. You have to write the tags, true, but there are tools to help. Read on for more.... > Are all of you so good that you compose in XML? I'm a perfect case study for this question. I didn't know *any* DocBook before last year, and I don't know a ton of it now, for that matter. But I know *enough*, and it only took an hour or two to get the hang of it. > Is there an emacs plugin that Iâm missing that allows you to write > your content, then adds all of the *basic* XML tags for you? Yes. At a minimum, install psgml, which came with your Fedora distribution. You should already have installed the "Authoring and Publishing" group of tools from your System Settings => Add/Remove Software tool, which is actually system-config-packages. There are other, and many would argue better, tools, such as psgmlx or nxml-mode, which are essentially plugins for Emacs. (Emacs devotees, please don't flame the wording, I'm purposefully simplifying here, in large part for myself too.) They do all the cool work like highlighting your tags, indenting things nicely, and letting you use keyboard shortcuts and auto-completion for tag names. For example, in psgml, you can hit Ctrl+C, "<" to start a tag, then type the first few letters and hit Tab to complete the name, or get a list. Then you hit Enter to insert the tag, and just keep typing. You get used to this VERY fast. I don't even notice doing it anymore. Other tools work similarly. You should read the Documentation Guide, available at the FDP home page at http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/ ... don't skim it, really READ it, and you'll learn a lot. I did. Erm, eventually. :-) > Where does the author start and the editor begin? Reading the archives and Karsten's process document (see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=129993) will give you a better idea how this works. > Do you compose in your favorite editor, then once the content is > complete, open it in emacs using the template, and parse it that way? > Whatâs the /theoretical/ process, and the /practical/ application of > that process? I just write in Emacs, it's actually easier that way. You can just write big sections with notes and fill them in later as you go. > Iâve skimmed the Documentation Guide, and the Quick Start, and didnât > get a whole lot out of it other than I should be either an author, or > an editor. See above comment. :-) We really need authors right now, to be honest. It would really suck for everyone to want to be an editor, and have nothing to edit! You can do both for different documents, but in all honesty, I would recommend to any new person coming in that authoring is the way to go right now. Just my $0.02. I have a feeling we will all be doubling up a bit to get things off the ground in the next few months, if we don't want to be embarrassed one day by the fact that FC4 is on the way without (yet again) an installation guide, for example. > Karsten has volunteered to be my editor for this particular project, > so I guess that makes me the author. ;) So are there considerations > to be made while Iâm writing the content? Will those come after the > fact? Are they my responsibility or the editors? His process document will tell you a lot about this. > I apologize for so many questions, but this is my first âofficialâ > documentation project, so I want to make sure I get it right. ;) Asking questions is always the right way to start. > <== dataking's pgp ==> > 9287 3334 03E4 965E 0D2D F7CA A6E7 407C 1558 A263 Shouldn't I know your name before I trust your key? :-) Tee hee, just a thought. Welcome aboard and hope you're excited about the work, there's a lot to go around, it seems! -- Paul W. Frields, RHCE
