Hello: I have some comments about the (G)UI aspect of the CMS ideas floating around. Imagine that everything following is prefixed with the "in my experience," "in my opinion," or "as a new/prospective docs contributor," warning. Quaid: >While Publican gives us a way to build a nicely organized tree of >content, it doesn't give other capabilities. I don't know of any >plans to include this sort of thing in Publican natively: >* Ability to trigger (re)builds from source repositories via a webUI. >* Workflow control, either by group (writers, editors, publishers), or > specific roles like that but per document (I can write this one, I > can edit yours, and I can push hers to publish after you edit it.) >* WYSIWYG editor for DocBook XML from source repository. Having to learn fifteen (or even three) completely different programs before being able to contribute is discouraging. It's also somewhat irrelevant how difficult it is to learn those programs, because new contributors are going to be afraid of making mistakes. Quaid: >Basically, we still have very high barriers to move from "edit stuff >on the wiki" to "manage a full guide on DocBook XML." The main >purpose for a CMS is to get the ability to publish and tweak >docs.fedoraproject.org out of the hands of a very few, very busy >people, and in to the hands of just about anyone that this team wants >to authorize to do work there. That barrier is very real. If you want something that will allow a lot of people to contribute to the publishing effort, then it's going to have to be easy. Furthermore, technical barriers should only exist for things actually related to the writing process. That is to say, the fact that I don't already know how to use git shouldn't stop be from contributing to a guide - it should be the fact that I don't already know the program I'm going to write about. Quaid: >This proposal exists partially because of our commitment to using >Publican to publish. I ask this out of ignorance for the docs process and without any real idea of what Publican is or what it does: why are we using it? I'm sure there's a good reason, but "But we're using Publican!" seems to be the reason that Docs doesn't already have a CMS. Quaid: >Functions: > ... >0. Read What we do here has to look good, and it has to be easy to use. I'm tempted to say that this particular aspect of the documentation process shouldn't be left to the Docs team at all. Writers of documents should be focussed on the content of those documents. Leave all the typesetting and other business to people who are focussed on that. Docs could bring in (or maybe already has) some people focussed on this, but maybe another Fedora SIG is better-suited to document presentation than Docs is. I would personally at least like to see visual integration with the rest of the Fedora Project website. Currently the docs website is one of the many confusing sub-worlds of FP, and it looks, frankly, cold and unhelpful. More importantly, it must be easy to use. The new Docs website is definitely an improvement over the old one, but it still doesn't answer questions that I ask of it quite often, like: 1.) What happened to the content of F12's Deployment Guide? 2.) What's the difference between the SELinux guides? 3.) What's the difference between "Managing Confined Serivces" and "Security?" 4.) Why are there tips for SELinux in "Managing Confined Services?" 5.) Where is the answer to my question? 6.) My question isn't answered here, so now what? These are not problems with the guides themselves, but with the Publican-created website that offers no help in finding help. Sure, there's a search box, and sure I could answer those questions by reading the documents and comparing, but I think we can do better. I only resort to a search if I can't guess my way through a site. Here's what I'd like to see as a user: 1.) I need help. 2.) I go to fedoraproject.org 3.) I click "Get Help," and somehow decide that "Documentation" is right for me (it should be advertised better). 4.) I'm greeted by a visual/written organizer that helps me see which guide I want. 5.) My web browser automatically detects which version of Fedora I'm using, or else I am asked, and provided a list with the currently-supported versions displayed and an "other versions" button to access documentation for not-currently-supported versions. 6.) If I can't find the answer to my problems, I get directed back to the "Get Help" page, or to upstream documentation. All the while, the familiar fp.o website look and feel has stayed the same, as seen in the top and left portions of this page: http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-help Quaid: >1. Write/edit This is a task separate from reading documents, so we can use a different application. My preference is for an extension to an existing text editor, that: -incorporates well-known text-editing features, -incorporates DocBook XML help, -incorporates fast/easy ways to get and commit what you've been working on. Emacs could accomplish these things, but it's not a great solution. Contributors would have to learn how to use emacs first, and then learn how to use the Docs extensions to emacs. Emacs is not easy to use, or a friendly application. It terrifies me. This could be written as an extension or plugin for GEdit, but again I don't feel this is a great solution. Users might feel like they need to learn two things (like with an emacs extension), and they might rightly feel like they aren't being provided with a fully-customized, Docs-tailored experience. Of course, they're right about that - other things go on in GEdit, too. My preference would be for an editor incorporating the KWrite KPart. I don't know the details of this, but it might have dependencies in KDE, which makes this choice much less attractive for a GNOME distribution. They may or may not be that troublesome. Here are some benefits to this approach: -it will result in a fully-customized application; users might not even notice that it's built primarily with KPart's -you can incorporate many different KPart's: like the web-browsing one, which would allow you to use some web-based interface, or view DocBook XML help files online; or the PDF-viewing one, which would allow you to preview a PDF version of what you're working on -users will feel like they need to learn only one thing, but we can also take advantage of the fact that they'll instinctively be able to use the KPart's -the application basically already exists, and most of it would be maintained for us by upstream KDE developers It just seems so much more attractive to me to use a Publican front-end called "Publican" than to have to start GEdit, turn on Publican mode, and still have to use external applications to preview my work, or to get help. Quaid: >2. Publish A much smaller number of people will be publishing, compared to the number writing and editing. The publishing tasks could be incorporated into a text-editing GUI, but since you're just moving things around on the internet, it makes more sense to use a web-based application for this. I hadn't intended to advocate against a CMS, but it looks like I will. "The Unix(TM) Way" is to build tools that do one thing well, and combine them into things that accomplish Useful Work. This is what would be happening with a KPart-based GUI editor. Keeping with that same line of thought, it doesn't make sense to use a single (web-based) tool to do three different tasks: reading, writing, and publishing. These are distinctly different tasks, so we should use distinctly different tools. Moreover, this separation will help us to tailor each tool to its specific task. Most people who use the official documentation will not be writing them, and the official documentation should look professional/official. It's not a wiki. The goal, as I understand it, is to make the barrier for entry as low as possible, but it can't be seen as too low, or else it discredits the project. I don't think we were at imminent risk of that, but it's something to consider with a CMS. The nice thing about this is that the Docs SIG already has a working process, and already produces the best documentation of any Linux-based operating system. It was the Four Fs that brought me to Fedora, but it was the quality of the documentation that made me stay. Christopher. -- docs mailing list docs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/docs
