[documentation] Book update

[Steven Peck]

Greetings all,

Is everyone having fun with getting ready for the 5.0 release?  Good!

The handbook has evolved and each time it worked for it's evolution to a
degree and changed the nature of the questions asked.  So now it's time
for the next evolution.  Our audience has changed.  I am after
achievable goals.

So, my thoughts on achievable goals...  Rewrite/re-org the Installation
and configuration book.

Make it's primary focus installing and configuring Drupal core.  Nothing
else.  In a beginning to end -start to finish format, with screen shots
and an appendix.  I envision this to include an expansion on the End
User guide as well.  The end result would be something that could be
turned into a video cast or series of video casts.  

Rework the planning a website page.  It's a good start but needs some
tweaking and streamlining / editing.  Maybe even separate off the
examples into sub pages to give room for a variety of planning examples?
(I can convince my friend to contribute a reworked / streamlined article
of his http://www.ericwoodford.com/complete_write_up for instance to
contrast the existing example)  A lot of our neophyte site builders and
entry level web people have skipped this step and with Drupal it's
really hard to skip and get your site right in a manner that is
sustainable over time if you haven't thought about the design.  This may
even reduce some forum questions.

Move the core and contrib module sections into the customization and
theming book and treat it like a reference section.  (We can revisit it
later if we can sustain the momentum)  Add an article explaining what a
reference section is and how to use it in the intro of the install book.
Move the advanced stuff to an advanced section (sort of an appendix to
the install book) but keep it in the book.

Move the Migrating to the dev handbook.  Migrating is not a simple task,
more of a development task.  

Maybe break the Troubleshooting  FAQ out into its own book.  Stop
duplication of this information and get it consolidated.  We have some
parallel efforts going on in this area and I'd like to see 2-3 people
step up will to own and work together to support the troubleshooting
FAQ.  Agree on the mission and style for it first.

And even though it's hard, start pulling out very old and not relevant
information from the handbook.  Assuming we can get the one book redone,
then we can discuss the next book to approach.  There are some
improvements to the api module that generates api.drupal.org that may
help clean out the developers handbook of various things as well.

So thoughts? Opinions?  Outline submissions?  I can make a scratch site
for working on / fighting over and discussing things available too if
there is enough interest.  In the past not enough sustained interest has
presented itself to actually continue when people wandered off
distracted.  :-)

-sp





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