[drupal-docs] Handbook v2

[Steven Peck]

A little over two years ago, the project I was involved with converted
over to DocBook with all documentation in CVS.  As my wife was pregnant
and son soon born, I drifted away from the project  with the exception
of checking in from time to time.

The LEAF-project had someone who was essentially a project manager.
Initially, he double-checked all submissions, sent little how to's, and
strategies to the developers and document maintainers.  It was a
learning curve.  However, they have had clean documentation for several
years now.  The documentation files are built daily from cvs and are
downloadable.

If we go to DocBook format (something I am not against) than it should
be now and not later.  I imagine there will be some initial pain and
confusion.  I imagine that if I had stayed active in the project, I
would know DocBook.  As it is, I can learn DocBook now.  :)

I don't know what they are yet, but I know that 2-1/2 years ago there
were free Windows tools to do DocBook, I imagine that there are more
now.  We would need some good general instructions to do this and
document standards as well.  :)

-sp

> -----Original Message-----
> From: drupal-docs-bounces at drupal.org 
>
> #3 (especially 3a) is the main roadblock possibilty if we go on this 
> route. DocBook editing can be done with any XML aware editors. Apart 
> from that it is some nice markup language to learn (no Textile, no 
> Markdown), and can be edited as XHTML. To have proper diffs, 
> one should 
> not use some nice visual tool, which will reorganize the 
> file, and will 
> lead to horrible diffs after all.
> 
> Goba