[CentOS-docs] Documentation SIG

Thu Mar 13 14:17:51 UTC 2014
Jim Perrin <jperrin at centos.org>


On 03/13/2014 08:44 AM, Tim Krupinski wrote:
> Thanks for the info.  I just checked Redhat's support site, and it 
> appears the docs are licensed as such:
> 
>      This document is licensed by Red Hat under the Creative Commons 
> Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License 
> <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>. If you
>      distribute this document, or a modified version of it, you must 
> provide attribution to Red Hat, Inc. and provide a link to the
>      original.     If the document is modified, all Red Hat trademarks 
> must be removed.
> 
> Are you concerned with the amount of effort it would take to remove all 
> of RedHat's trademarks if we were to modify it?  Either way, one of the 
> first things I wanted to address wasn't necessarily adding more 
> documentation, but starting a conversation about how it's currently 
> organized on the wiki.


Yes. It was mostly a 'level of effort' concern since the sources aren't
published. Coupled with a concern about how we'd add our
project-specific documentation (variant or sig work as joe brought up).


> For example, on the Front Page, there are four different tabs that 
> reference "Documentation" - Help, Tips & Tricks, How To, and FAQs.  It 
> isn't very clear whether the FAQ is about the Wiki, or the project.  
> Compare that to the Fedora Project wiki, where the front page has one 
> pretty obvious link in the sidebar called 'Documentation'.  From there 
> you can get the official manuals, information on the IRC channel, etc.

What suggestions or changes would you make?

> The other mild annoyance i've experienced with CentOS documentation is 
> that i'm commonly linked to a section of an outdated version - like the 
> other day when I searched for some X11 settings and was referred to 
> Chapter 30 from the CentOS 4.5 manual.  Personally it's not a big deal 
> because I know that this is still relevant.  But as a newcomer to either 
> the Linux commnities or CentOS specifically, I would be wondering why I 
> can't find up-to-date documents.

True, but a fair chunk of this is related to the fact that we don't
currently have 6.x documentation.


> That being said, I suppose the next step is to find out how I should go 
> from here.  Are there any sort of regular meetings?  What other 
> collaboration tools are used?  If there's nothing formal maybe a 
> conference call might prove useful.  I can set up a bridge line if 
> people are interested in that.


So, lets work at establishing a set of goals or changes we need to make.
Once we have that we can get some input or agreement from others on the
list, and then identify how/when to make the changes.


> Thanks again,
> 
> Tim
> 
>> Joe Brockmeier <mailto:jzb at redhat.com>
>> March 13, 2014 at 8:00 AM
>>
>> Another thing to consider, and I don't know if I've seen elsewhere, is
>> whether there'll be a 'standard' way to produce documentation for
>> variants / anything produced by SIGs.
>>
>> Will that just go on the wiki? Should it be full-blown DocBook guides
>> like the official upstream docs? Will every SIG just make that decision
>> on their own? (In a perfect world, documentation for all variants would
>> be similar and not a Frankenstein's monster mix of wiki, DocBook, or
>> whatever else.)
>>
>> I guess the Xen4CentOS project would be the current poster child for
>> variants? Looks like that documentation lives on the wiki:
>>
>> http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/Xen4-01
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> jzb
>> Jim Perrin <mailto:jperrin at centos.org>
>> March 13, 2014 at 7:12 AM
>> On 03/12/2014 09:39 AM, Tim Krupinski wrote:
>>> Hey all -
>>>
>>> Just curious to find out if there's any activity with the documentation
>>> SIG?  I'd like to join.  One thing i've noticed is that it seems like
>>> documentation for CentOS ends at 5.  While the documentation is more or
>>> less mirrored from RedHat's site, this can be confusing to beginners since
>>> they may get the impression that documentation isn't there.
>>
>> Most of the activity has been around things other than docs, but you do
>> bring up a good point. We *need* to address this.
>>
>> With the 6.x documentation, there was a licensing change that
>> complicates things for us. Changes to the documentation mean that you
>> can't redistribute. Oracle appears to work around this by shipping the
>> official pdf documentation.
>>
>> The web pages for the docs are also done slightly differently, and
>> mirroring them would require editing the html. We're not certain if this
>> constitutes a 'change' or not and have been focusing on other things
>> (SIG, dojo efforts).
>>
>>> That being said, i would love to help out with bringing the wiki up to date
>>> in this regard.
>>
>> This would be fantastic, and I would very much welcome your efforts.
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Jim Perrin
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