State of the GnuCash project: A call for help

[Jon Lapham]

Benoit Grégoire wrote:
> This is an article I wrote after several discussions about GnuCash's future 
> over the last few weeks.  I believe that it is important for everyone to take 
> the time to read it completely.  

Great work Benoit!

You know, I had written a detailed list of frustrations I have had with 
the GC project.  But, in the end, I deleted it.  The only constructive 
part of that deleted treatise was that I mentioned that if it wasn't for 
people like you (Benoit), Christain Stimming, Chris Lyttle, and Derek, I 
would have let the project in frustration.  Thanks guys.

My contribution to GCs call for help:

There is no reason why GC cannot have the best documentation of any 
financial accounting software package on the planet.  That is my goal, 
and I will continue to work in that direction.  When the *next* version 
of GC comes out one day, I want it to already have complete docs.

What is needed to accomplish this:

1) The docs people need somewhere on the web site to upload 
documentation in progress.  A "temp" kinda area.  Complete access would 
be better, but that seems to be difficult to get.

2) We should create a branch (is that the lingo?) in the documentation. 
  If we had a 1.8 *and* 1.10 branch, we could start writing the new 
features up today, or at least outlining them in general terms. 
Obviously we are not ready to make screenshots, etc.

3) The web site should make it REALLY, REALLY simple for people to find 
the correct documentation (see my proposal from a few days ago).

4) When answering people on the user- list that ask The Same Old 
Question Again, we should refer to the documentation, ie: give them a 
link to the relevent docs.  Why?  Because *this* person asking the 
question is *exactly* the kind of person we want feedback from on the 
docs.  I did this a number of times with people, and it worked out 
great.  I asked (nicely) if the user would read such and so web site and 
let me know if it answered their question.  If not, I promised I would 
help them.

5) The web site should make it REALLY, REALLY obvious what a new user 
should do if s|he wants to contribute.

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  Jon Lapham  <lapham at extracta.com.br>          Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
  Work: Extracta Moléculas Naturais SA     http://www.extracta.com.br/
  Web: http://www.jandr.org/
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