Confirming that no one else is working on Guide Documentation, Chapter 3

[Tommy Trussell]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 3:10 PM, Tom Bullock <tbullock at nd.edu> wrote:
>
> On 7/23/2010 5:47 PM, Tommy Trussell wrote:
>>
>> I am not working on that section
>
> Should I infer you are working on another part of the documentation?

I apologize for my wording -- so far all the work I have done has been
to several pages in the wiki. For example, after the storm of reports
messages in the past few weeks I have contributed some small things to
one new wiki page http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Using_GnuCash

I hope that ultimately the information people contribute to that page
(like other information in the wiki) might be refined to the point
where it could go into the "canonical" documentation that gets
distributed with the documentation and gets managed in the svn
repository.

>> and I don't know the "official
>> answers,"
>
> Answers from whom can be taken as "official"?  a number of developers have
> stated they are currently on vacation.

Again, I apologize for my wording -- you are now the person in charge
of the documentation (at least the part you're working on) because you
are currently doing the (laudable and much-appreciated) work! Since
the (apparently failed as Derek confirmed) 2006 experiment using the
wiki for edits may not reflect the "canonical" documentation, I
suggest you might use information in the wiki to inform your work and
maybe document your ideas and procedures, but continue updating the
docbook source.

I did a few Google searches and found some scripts that might convert
docbook to wiki, and some OTHER scripts that might convert wiki to
docbook. However, because I know of no bidirectional conversion
utility, I would be leary of trusting either.

Since svn can publish the docbook source directly to the web, but the
wiki cannot reliably update the svn, using the wiki for reviews or
edits may be a mistake anyway. Maybe we should even consider deleting
the wiki pages holding the docbook drafts and instead publish links
directly to the docbook pages in svn. The wiki might continue be used
to collect suggestions or drafts on their way to docbook, but for that
purpose, regular clipboard cut-and-paste might be sufficient.

I have background working with documentation and hope to contribute
more eventually, but am not quite there yet, so I apologize for
muddying the waters. When you have sections you want others to review
I hope I can help you in that way.

Sorry for the noise.