All, This is a request for feedback from the community.
There is a proposal put forward by Canonical to provide a consistent look and feel for all Ubuntu documentation, regardless of whether it is primarily maintained by the Community or by Canonical. The idea is that this will provide a better user experience for the reader. The process of building and publishing would also change so that all projects will use the same method. Not only will this make it easier compared to current methods but it will allow people to work on different projects using the same workflow and toolset. Currently, the "Canonical docs" consist of MAAS, Juju, Ubuntu Core, and Landscape. There is a central doc site under construction, docs.ubuntu.com, that would link to all these documentation sites. For help.ubuntu.com, each help topic (Server, Desktop, and Installation Guide) would get their own page (e.g. docs.ubuntu.com/server). help.u.c would continue to exist solely for the help wiki, which is not documentation. All this would entail: - Initial conversion of all XML files to GFM (GitHub Flavored Markdown) [1]. Done by Canonical. - New and actively maintained doc builder [2] - Streamlined build and publication processes - A common theme - Contributions from the Canonical Docs Team members to the current help.u.c projects (personal time) - Multiple build formats across the board (where appropriate) For contributors, workflow changes would be: - Write in Markdown - Use a different build tool (local building to verify HTML) It is my hope that moving to Markdown will act as a catalyst to get people to contribute to docs again. It is certainly more user-friendly than the two forms of XML currently in use. Launchpad and Bazaar will continue to be used for the current help.u.c topics, mostly due to translations. Canonical could create a mockup site of the Server Guide to show what all this would look like, including at the commit, build, and publish levels. Note that documentation for the Canonical-sponsored projects is available for contributions from the community (minus internationalization at this time) and will be published according to CC BY-SA 4.0 [3]. Thanks for listening, -- Peter Matulis, Documentation Canonical Ltd. [1]: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet [2]: https://github.com/CanonicalLtd/documentation-builder [3]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ -- ubuntu-translators mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-translators
