Hi there!
There´s one thing we should not forget when discussing to use the Wiki
for creating Specifications.
We do have a semi-automated process to generate Release Notes. This
takes advantage of the OpenOffice Document file format and a standard
template being used for the specification documents. Information from
specifications documents is extracted via XSLT and a "What´s new guide"
HTML page is created which is the basis for the Release Notes.
See for example: http://development.openoffice.org/releases/2.0.4rc3.html
If we want to work on Specifications in the Wiki there are two
possibilities:
1.) After work is finished in the Wiki and at a give time just before
the release, let´s say at UI - Freeze or something like that content
from the Wiki must be moved to a .odt document.
2.) We need to work on the process to create the document for the
Release Notes and create a new feature there to be able to extract
information from the WiKi and we also need to set up some kind of
template and corresponding rules on how specs in the Wiki do have too
look to be able to find the information that is going to be extracted
for the Release Notes.
If we go for 1.) we should take into account that we
do also have Feature Mails and that those contain the link to the
specification which is used in the process to generate the release
notes, so the move from Wiki to .odt must be done at least before the
feature mail is being written.
For 2.) I think it might be not as easy to extract information from the
wiki as it is to extract that from the OpenDocument Format, but we would
have to see.
Kind regards,
Bernd Eilers
David Fraser wrote:
Hi Christian
Thanks for your offer! I think a wiki version of the Template would be a
substantial aid to many people, and from the rest of the response on the
mailing list I'm not alone in thinking that.
Could you let us know if you start working on this - I presume
wiki.services.openoffice.org is the place - as then others could perhaps
participate :-)
Regards
David
Christian Jansen wrote:
Hi David,
from a feature documentation perspective it makes no difference to use
the template, a wiki, a HTML page, or what ever comes into your mind.
I think it is more important that the UI feature and its functionality
is described in well mannor. I personally think a wiki is absolutely
fine to do that, but both (template or wiki) should follow the same
guidelines.
The template was intended to give novice spec writers some help to
write a spec. We decided to use the Writer format because it allows us
to do some automation which makes it convenient to use. Especially
creating complex tables in a wiki is no fun.
However, I can offer to create a wiki-version of the new template.
Regards,
Christian
David Fraser schrieb:
Kazunari Hirano wrote:
Hi,
Frank Schönheit wrote:
However, what I really *really* like about this process is
the exchange of ideas and arguments.
I respect the process.
I encourage community developers and CJK developers to access the spec
project wiki [1] and the spec template [2].
For issue 12719 I attempted to have a faster and more accessible
specification process
This involved developing the spec collaboratively in the wiki
Unfortunately the spec team did not like this idea and have gone for
an OOo template for designing specifications with
This is perhaps better than the previous system, but I think there
are still significant cases where using a wiki is a much faster route
for people (particularly outside contributors) to use to
collaboratively produce a specification.
Unfortunately I did not have time to pursue this idea; fortunately
the Sun team that took over the issue did look through our wiki-based
spec and hopefully included some things - the issue is now fixed
which is nice :-)
But I would like to propose that this approach to spec generation be
given more thought. Reasons:
1) Wikis are designed for this
2) It is easier for a person not heavily involved in OOo to go to a
wiki page, make a few changes, edit it, and submit, then it is to get
a document out of version control etc, open it in OOo, change it and
submit
3) The spec process is apparently working well for those inside Sun,
less well for those outside. If there were an easier route for those
less involved in development to produce specs it could be run
concurrently as an alternate mechanism (possibly with a final step of
converting to the required template format, that could be automated)
4) This would perhaps be particularly helpful for outside
contributers who are not coders
5) Less likely to break due to problems in the OOo template macros :-)
This was done by having a wiki template that could then be filled out
to produce the spec.
Thoughts?
David
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