[documentation] Documentation session in Vancouver

[Boris Mann]

On 11-Jan-06, at 7:09 PM, Angie Byron wrote:

> As some may or may not know, I'm planning to moderate a session  
> about Drupal documentation at the Open Source CMS Summit and  
> DrupalCon in Vancouver next month. I have some ideas of things I'd  
> like to open for discussion, but thought it good to canvas here too  
> for ideas (especially if you're planning to attend! remember that  
> these are working group discussions and not presentations (thank  
> goodness ;)).
>
> Some topics I am thinking about are:
>
> * What improvements can we make to the handbook?
> * How can we nake it easier for people to contribute?

Either allow anyone to edit any handbook page, or implement the best  
practices etc. as story nodes that I have suggest time and again and  
which I will now mention for the last time on this list before trying  
to win people over to my cause in person :P

> * What strategies can we utilize for distributing module  
> documentation centrally from Drupal.org?

I think this ties directly into the next question. Because, if we  
have .txt (or other markup files) distributed we can potentially  
offer an (e.g.) extendedhelp.module that makes this available. Total  
stab in the dark, needs discussion under next session...

> * How can we more efficiently store help documentation for modules  
> rather than placing text inside the files themselves?

This one is in part a development question. I had attempted to start  
this discussion, and it became a developers want it this way,  
documentation writers need it to work this other way discussion.

I'd love to see documentation a) be self hosted on top of Drupal  
itself (i.e. we use Drupal to create/maintain the documentation and  
b) make it easy for non-developers to update and include with  
modules. No real answers there, lots of discussion needed, I think.  
Actually, I'd love to look more at what other projects do and see  
about finding some best practices....


> For more information on OSCMS/DrupalCon, see:
> http://drupal.org/conference-vancouver-2006
>
> To sign up for the session, go to:
> http://scratch.blkmtn.org/index.php?q=node/37

Actually, please don't promote that site anymore...everything will be  
centralized at http://www.oscms-summit.org (right, Chad?). Thanks  
sepeck for letting Chad use that, but we really needed clean URLs, a  
domain, etc. etc.

--
Boris Mann
Vancouver 778-896-2747 San Francisco 415-367-3595
SKYPE borismann
http://www.bryght.com