[documentation] String freeze Dec 1st!

[Steve Kessler]

How do we submit patches for specific strings...like the explanation of cron
on admin/config/system/site-information

Thanks,
Steve 

Steve Kessler 
Denver DataMan 
303-587-4428 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Hodgdon [mailto:yahgrp at poplarware.com] 
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2009 10:36 PM
To: A list for documentation writers
Subject: [documentation] String freeze Dec 1st!

Hello Doc Team,

I just want to say first how exciting it has been that so many of you 
pitched in to help with the help system overview! Tremendous progress 
has been made; now it's mostly a matter of reviewing/updating patches 
and getting them committed. See http://drupal.org/node/537828 if you 
are curious about what's been happening and get involved.

Anyway... I found out today that the upcoming User Experience (UX) 
freeze for Drupal 7 is also supposed to include a "string freeze". 
Which is to say, all of the text within Drupal 7 that needs to be 
translated (help text and user interface text) is supposed to be 
frozen on December 1st -- less than 2 weeks away -- aside from "bugs" 
(which after December 1st means just spelling and minor grammatical 
errors, not totally rewriting or rearranging). That includes the D7 
help effort!

So, I would like to suggest that both programming and non-programming 
members of the Drupal Documentation team (this means you, if you are 
subscribed to this email list) -- if you have some free time between 
now and December 1st, you can try:

a) Installing Drupal 7 (you can download the latest version at 
http://drupal.org/project/drupal if you are not using CVS) and 
reviewing the text you see on its user interface and help. My 
suggestion is to enable all of the core modules (especially the Help 
module), try out some of the features/tasks/screens, and if you find 
something in the user interface that doesn't make sense, file an issue.

Hints on filing an issue:
- Start from http://drupal.org/node/add/project-issue/drupal
- Version: 7.x
- Component: The module or theme the problem is in, or "documentation" 
if it is in a help file.
- Category: Bug report
- It is very helpful to put in a good summary in the Title, and a full 
description of the problem you saw, where you saw it (what screen -- 
give the Drupal path), when you saw it (if you had to enter or do 
something to get this bad text to appear), why you think it is bad, 
and if possible your suggested better text.

b) Reviewing proposed patches. Search using the Advanced Search 
interface starting at http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal 
for issues that have status "needs review", version 7.x, and one of 
the following:
- Tagged with "ui-text" [without the quotes, of course]
- Tagged with "Help text"
- Tagged with "d7help"

Hints on patch review:
- Even if you are not a programmer, you can still review the text in 
these patches. Scroll down to the bottom of the issue's comments, and 
find the latest patch attachment. Click on the attachment, and the 
lines with + are being added, lines with - are being removed.
- If you think the patch is good, add a comment saying what part you 
reviewed and that you thought it was good.
- If you think the patch needs some work, change the status of the 
issue to "needs work", and add a specific comment about what you think 
should be changed (if possible, with a suggestion of what to change it 
to).

c) Participate in the D7 Usability sprint this weekend if you can:
http://webchick.net/node/72

Thanks, and keep up the good work!

    --Jennifer

ps: If you need help with filing issues or reviewing patches, you can 
get advice from the doc team on our IRC channel - #drupal-docs. See 
http://groups.drupal.org/node/2326 for info on IRC if you don't know 
how to connect. There are also useful links on 
http://drupal.org/node/540308

-- 
Jennifer Hodgdon * Poplar ProductivityWare
www.poplarware.com
Drupal, WordPress, and custom Web programming

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