Hi Paul,

Great questions, here are some long answers. You wrote:

> 
> 1) What is the process to get a document added to the
> Open Solaris Documentation Consolodation?

Since you are writing for Sun storage software, you must first perform legal 
preparations, which I think you understand, but we can discuss offline to get 
you any needed advice. 

Then, we should update the Roadmap to reflect the timing of your source 
delivery to OpenSolaris--this rolls-up to the p-team and makes the rest of the 
project aware of your sources, so if a request sponsor comes in or a bug is 
filed, the triage teams know where to find you :) You should check that an 
appropriate category and sub-category exist for your docs in 
bugs.opensolaris.org.

After the legal prep and roadmap update, just notify me of the location of your 
sources and I can add them to the tarball. It is updated each month (except 
March because I traveled and then got sick with the crud). 

As FYI, I'm prepping a new set of files to push today or tomorrow... An 
engineer missed their review deadline, then provided changes after the final 
doc was submitted, now updates, lint, visual inspection, and re-submission are 
underway--can anyone on this list relate? :) I always look forward to those 2-3 
glorious minutes between publishing a final document and the ping that makes it 
obsolete...

> 
>    http://opensolaris.org/os/downloads/docs/
> ) It looks like the document must be DocBook5 XML.
>  Is that still the case?

Right, we are in the midst of a transition now, actually. DocBook5 is certainly 
a valid format for sources that are delivered through the Docs Consolidation, 
but we also have SolBook XML files in the consolidation now too. 

Background: We started with DocBook5 as our standard because the community 
agreed that this was the best structured markup standard with the most free 
tools available. So, for the first year of updates to the Doc Consolidation, I 
took SolBook sources, converted them to DocBook5 and delivered them to 
OpenSolaris. 

Meanwhile, the community kept asking for the SolBook, which just makes good 
sense. To that end, I've worked with the internal Sun doctools engineer Steven 
Cogorno to make SolBook files editable with free tools this year. This work was 
beta complete in Jan, so the Feb 07 updates to the docs consolidation include 
SolBook files for new and updated books (yay!). 

The community has been testing these sources and validating that they work with 
existing and new scripts and tools, and I expect this transition and beta 
period to last through the next couple of months. (Anyone who has cycles to 
test the new sources in their favorite editing tool, please do so and let us 
know how it goes.) At least one book (os-devref) in the Consolidation was not 
authored in SolBook and will remain DocBook5, until there is demand to change 
it. The SolBook DTD is a fully conforming subset of DocBook standard, so the 
same scripts and tools should work for both.
> 
> 3) Is the Documentation Consolidation the only way to
> provide the source for documentation on
>   OpenSolaris?

No, we certainly have documents and presentation slides with various different 
licenses (creative commons, etc.) available on OpenSolaris.org. But, for 
formal, structured technical documentation that includes Sun trademarks in 
titles and which is also provided as legally-binding support information for 
commercial products on docs.sun.com or elsewhere, the Docs Consolidation is the 
delivery mechanism that limits the most risk and, through the PDL v1.01 
license, gives contributors the clearest means of re-use, modification, and 
re-distribution rights possible.  Of course, we also house the Man Page 
Consolidation here too, so that is the other main delivery mechanism currently 
in use for documentation sources that are delivered with the code and licensed 
under CDDL. 

This may raise more questions than it answers, I do hope it is helpful. Feel 
free to ask follow-ups until it makes sense and question this stuff because it 
is a WIP and if it doesn't work for you or others or if the roadmap isn't 
clear, it probably is confusing for others too. 

Thanks!
Michelle



> Thanks,
> Paul
 
 
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