Documentation Overview

The GnuCash Project contains several kinds of Documentation. This pages explains the differences.

Targets

Where should users search first?

Where should contributors add information?

Existing Documentation

Integrated Documents

They are the content of our GitHub repository gnucash-docs, are usually shipped together with the program and accessible by its Help menu.

Note

Some distributions split them in a separate package "gnucash-doc" or similar. Then users should install it to have easier access.

Pros

Accessible without internet.

Cons

Sometimes partially outdated.

The Gnucash-docs consist of two parts:

gnucash-manual

is the reference manual describing the GUI elements and their relations.

gnucash-guide

contains the tutorial and the concepts guide. Here you can

1. learn our terminology and
2. the steps to resolve specific tasks.

Contributors

Requirement

Dokbook knowledge

Target

Finally all important documentation should end here!

Online Documents

Pros

Sometimes more recent.

Cons

Internet required.

Wiki

Pros

Often more recent.

Cons

Unreachable in CN because of the Great Firewall.

Content

Thematic pages

sometimes in several languages

The FAQ

a catch all starting point. But if there are 2 or more questions about the same theme, the content should go into a dedicated page, leaving only links in the FAQ.

• You can either Special:Search or navigate by Special:Categories.

Contributors

Only MediaWiki Markup required, for examples see Wiki_Tips.

Website

The current use is mainly

[[[:Template:WebURL]]/news.phtml announcements] and

(linking) downloads of

[[[:Template:WebURL]]/download.phtml program] or

[[[:Template:WebURL]]/docs.phtml documentation].

[[[:Template:WebURL]]/features.phtml features] shows still GnuCash 2.

[[[:Template:WebURL]]/sizing.phtml sizing] is a Y2K hommage.

Contributors

Requirements

PHP+HTML

Targets

mostly marketing

Lists

Archives of the Mailing Lists and IRC logs are available, but usually only a short time relevant and harder to search.

Other

Social Media

see Website header

Contributors

volunteering?

Improve Documentation

Code ------------+
Lists ---> Wiki -+-> Docs
           :     |
           LANG  +-> Website

Coders

should ideally also update the docs — or at least instead of closing fixed bugs assign them to component Documentation.

Users

should add frequently asked questions from the lists to wiki:FAQ.

Expirienced Users

should structure the content of FAQ sections into thematic wiki pages. To void redundancy, replace the content in the FAQ by links

Advanced Users

should integrate the thematic wiki pages into the official documentation.

Multilingual Users

Translate documents

Code and Website

offer PO file based translation. It can be easiest improved using WebLate.

Wiki

is possible. Improvements of the process needs coordination with User:Warlord.

Others

require knowledge of the documenter tools.