Nirbheek Chauhan wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 8:24 PM, AllenJB <gentoo-li...@allenjb.me.uk> wrote:
>> The situation with the Gentoo Handbook is quite frankly getting beyond a
>> joke for those of us donating our time to help users.
>>
>> I have tried to bring up the issues on the docs team list but pretty
>> much get shot down and told everything is fine and dandy.
>>
>> For example, quoteth the Handbook at:
>> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=5
>> Most PC users should use the stage3-i686-2008.0.tar.bz2 stage3 archive.
>>
>> This results in users starting out with a version of portage that
>> doesn't understand EAPI-2. Guess what happens next.
>>
>> I personally would happily donate my time to working on the docs, if
>> only it didn't involve a markup language nobody else uses.
> 
> You're in luck, the Beacon project has perfected it's Django branch
> which is now nearly ready for deployment. I think this is a far better
> option than converting all of the existing XML docs into Wiki and
> alienating an entire team.
> 
What is the Beacon project? URL? A tried a quick bit of googling but
came up with nothing useful.

What entire team? Part of the problem is that there appears to be no one
working on the docs to start with. There's been a bug open on the 2008.0
-> autobuilds change open since February with, as far as I can tell,
nothing at all done towards fixing the handbooks. (
http://bugs.gentoo.org/260403 )

The last comment on that bug by a docs team member basically says:
> All the doc they need is 'Boot CD, follow on-screen instruction. If it fails,
> file a bug for the release team'. Done.
> 
> Now, can we all forget abouth them?

Which I think is a very poor attitude for someone tasked with
maintaining the documentation (and appears to totally ignore the fact
that the abomination of an installer the GLI was has been long dead and
buried, even when that comment was made).

Just because you very rarely reinstall Gentoo, and once you've done it a
few times it's easy to do off-by-heart, that doesn't mean it should be
impossible for new users to ever install Gentoo for the first time. I
believe the Gentoo Handbook is a great, essential guide for new Gentoo
users - if only the install section actually worked!

AllenJB

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