- Wednesday June 24 2009, 23:22 - philbull: I've seen a few screencasts from betterdesktop, for example philbull: I'd like to get a collection of user tests together which the community as a whole can use philbull: (Maybe not as fancy as betterdesktop's, though) philbull: I'd also like to see us doing user tests of this sort as part of the routine of writing new documentation - 23:41 - philbull: hey, I'm off now. 'night - Sunday June 28 2009, 21:49 - - BrunoXLambert has joined the room - 22:01 - pcutler: shaunm: you here? pcutler: who's here / present for the doc meeting? * philbull is * Gwaihir (Milo) is * BrunoXLambert is j1mc: hi all * imp25 is here to listen Gwaihir: hi j1mc! pcutler: hi jim j1mc: i'm at another mtg... won't get to participate much * andre slacking and reading the backlog pcutler: we'll get started and see if our fearless leader shows up pcutler: agenda is here: http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Meeting20090628 shaunm: I"m here shaunm: sorry, was dropping off the cat at a friend's pcutler: woscon recap: Not sure how many have been folowing along on planet gnome, but a few of us went to the Writing Open Source conference in Canada 2 weeks ago pcutler: great pcutler: our recap for the board on woscon is here: http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Community/Woscon2009 - 22:06 - pcutler: if people have seen the blog posts, any questions about the conference? pcutler: Gwaihir, shaunm, philbull and myself were there pcutler: or any of you above feel free to add your comments about woscon pcutler: ok, next topic pcutler: one of the things we talked about at woscon was "know your audience" pcutler: and we talked about the docs team pcutler: and thought it might help if we grouped our team in to 3 groups: writers, editors and translators pcutler: and we started to re-do our wiki pages to reflect that (and they needed an update), but we still need to update those specific team pages pcutler: http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject pcutler: though Gwaihir has been working on the Translators page pcutler: so if anyone has any ideas on information that should be shared with writers, editors or translators, including process or tools, let's get it on the wiki Gwaihir: just a note: the translators page is more of a "get in touch with your team" shaunm: so I was reading a thread on the xfce4-dev list from last month about documentation shaunm: (this is on-topic, really) shaunm: one of the things discussed was documentation translations * claude is listening shaunm: and a number of people seemed to feel that documentation translation is an additional skill - 22:11 - shaunm: and that there should probably be people who focus on doing just that shaunm: it's not my role to tell translators how to structure their teams, of course. but would it be worthwhile for us to encourage translation teams to have a documentation liaison? pcutler: i would think so - and I think Damned Lies would support it. Look at the difference for some translations teams in strings vs docs - oliver has joined the room claude: for small teams it's already a huge effort to get ui translations done claude: so doc translations is often a nice-to-have for them Gwaihir: I really think that as the GNOME Doc Team we should cheerlead for our docs to be translated, but it's complex, teams are small shaunm: ok shaunm: so I understand that most teams are understaffed. and I don't think we're going to see 100% documentation coverage any time soon shaunm: in part because there's just a lot to translate, and that's just the way of the world - 22:16 - shaunm: I'm just thinking that documentation is a particular skill set, and translating documentation well is something that would be easier for somebody who's at least somewhat engaged with our team shaunm: so the small teams have bigger problems to worry about. I'm absolutely not going to get on anyone's back - BrunoXLambert has left the room - james_w has left the room - Gwaihir has left the room - dino has left the room - icez has left the room pcutler: ok, one last thing before I turn it over to shaun, is we're committed to more team communication, including regular meetings, such as this one, which will be monthly pcutler: darn netsplit :/ shaunm: yeah shaunm: you're turning it over to me? pcutler: shaunm: yup, recap the gnome 2.28 / 3.0 mallard stuff you started to talk about wed pcutler: but I'll give it a minute to see if the netsplit comes back shaunm: oh, ok andre: claude, it's also a question of tools in the translation teams. poedit and others can create a nice glossary, but i think many teams don't know or maybe some people use it but don't share andre: when it comes to tools and collaboration javier also had some nice ideas: http://live.gnome.org/JavierJardon/ImproveDocumentation - but might be worth to discuss on the mailing list, i just don't want to get this lost claude: andre: yep * andre shuts up again pcutler: the last thing about the meetings, in addition to this "formal" one, is we're going to schedule time where community members will be in irc - 22:21 - pcutler: that way, if anyone has questions, or is new, there's some time set aside to talk about anything related to docs pcutler: i think based on turnout the last 2 weeks (we've done one each week) bi-weekly would probably be fine pcutler: irc can be hit or miss, so I think it's a nice touch, personally shaunm: pcutler: for the time being, sure. we can always up the frequency later shaunm: but let's be careful that we don't stop doing them because of low turnout. persistence will pay off - BrunoXLambert has joined the room - icez has joined the room shaunm: or, at least, non-persistence is guaranteed not to pay off, so we might as well try persistence pcutler: heh, that's a good way to put it - Gwaihir has joined the room shaunm: ok, we have Gwaihir back Gwaihir: sorry guys... I have a 10s lag here... pcutler: yup, I think that's everyone except dino - james_w has joined the room - dino has joined the room BrunoXLambert: 10 seconds lag sounds cool i got disconected shaunm: now that we have everyone back pcutler: np, you didn't miss anything important, just gave an update on community IRC meetings, and recommended bi-weekly time Gwaihir: ok, great shaunm: I'm not trying to demand anything out of the translation teams. shaunm: all I meant was I think we should encourage at least the healthier teams to have somebody who maybe comes to a few of our meetings from time to time shaunm: or subscribes to our list - 22:26 - * Gwaihir nods shaunm: basically, "if you don't feel ready to tackle documentation in your team right now, no worries. if you're ready to tackle it, why don't you come hang out with us some?" shaunm: just trying to open up communication Gwaihir: we need more exposure for that, and the planet is a good media, we need to blog more often about this, I think people will somehow show up shaunm: yeah shaunm: so I don't think we need to assign anybody any action items about this right now. let's just continue trying to be chattier as a team pcutler: write every day! shaunm: man, that lasted two days for me pcutler: shaunm: want to give an update on your plans for mallard and gnome-doc-utils / yelp for 2.28 and the challenges involved? pcutler: and an update on the build work you did this weekend shaunm: ok - 22:32 - shaunm: so after this meeting, I'm more or less out of things for the next three weeks shaunm: I'll be back about a week or so before feature freeze, iirc shaunm: so where we're at now is likely to be *close* to where we'll be for 2.28 shaunm: where we're at now: shaunm: I've just added support for mallard documents into the build utilities in gnome-doc-utils shaunm: you can now build, verify, and install your documents shaunm: the documents won't show up in yelp, because there's no scrollkeeper/rarian integration shaunm: I mean, you can view them in yelp, but they won't show up in the categorical listing of documents shaunm: I plan on gutting that stuff for 3.0 anyway shaunm: I still need to set up the mallard stylesheets for localization shaunm: I did spend some time today addressing rtl issues in the mallard stylesheets shaunm: stylesheet internationalization work is an evening of not terribly difficult work. unfortunately, I'm out of evenings shaunm: um, I'll say more about that in a minute - 22:37 - shaunm: the other issue is xml2po. going from xml->po sort of works with the default mode of xml2po, although it's not as good as it could be shaunm: e.g. you get placeholders for all inline markup, which is pretty sucky shaunm: I'm told there are issues going po->xml shaunm: fortunately, you don't need me for this, because I don't maintain xml2po pcutler: shaunm: regarding the scrollkeeper / rarian integration, is that work DonS has done in the past? is there any chance of that making it in for 2.28? shaunm: if DonS appears from the mist and does it, yes shaunm: otherwise, very very unlikely Gwaihir: danilo is the maintainer of xml2po, did he get back to you? pcutler: ok, thanks shaunm: I also don't think it's particularly important shaunm: I'd be surprised if a substantial number of people access application help that way pcutler: do we have to have that for an application like Empathy or Banshee to ship mallard documents in 2.28? shaunm: no shaunm: those applications will be able to open their help files in yelp pcutler: got it, thanks shaunm: you just won't be able to browse to their help files if you open yelp from the System menu or something - 22:43 - shaunm: so stylesheet localization shaunm: anybody who's got decent familiarity with xslt could look at how it's done in the docbook stylesheets and do the work pretty easily shaunm: I will try to check my email every day or two. but I probably won't check mailing list folders shaunm: I also won't be able to commit anything pcutler: enjoy your vacation shaunm: but if anybody wants to do some xslt, jfdi, email me the patch for review, and I will try to get back to you as quickly as I can shaunm: what else do you need to know about the current state of things? pcutler: that's all I can think of, unless anyone has any questions? shaunm: Gwaihir, philbull: did either of you do the build stuff for the empathy docs? Gwaihir: shaunm: not yet, I'm waiting g-d-u to be in ubuntu dev version - 22:48 - pcutler: Gwaihir: do you think you'll ship the new empathy docs in 2.28, or is that too aggressive a timeline? Gwaihir: james_w: any idea when g-d-u 0.17.2 will be in karmic? james_w: Gwaihir: hey, you need g-d-u 0.17.2? james_w: snap Gwaihir: james_w: james_w: I can do that now if you like Gwaihir: james_w: lovely! Gwaihir: pcutler: maybe it's possible to do it Gwaihir: I can concentrate on that and have probably a good coverage of the application pcutler: one last agenda point, we as a team are trying to be more involved as a community, including participating in downstream docs meetings where approrpriate, so if anyone ever wants us at a meeting, let us know Gwaihir: at least the most used and requested features and questions that could arise from those features pcutler: Gwaihir: cool pcutler: that's it for the formal agenda, what kind of questions / comments are there? shaunm: oh, I will roll a yelp release tonight shaunm: for that pesky bug I fixed for pcutler pcutler: oh, and we have a spiffy new blog: http://blogs.gnome.org/docs pcutler: shaunm: thanks shaunm: and also increment the required version of g-d-u in configure Gwaihir: we found some work for james_w so... james_w: shaunm: hey, did you see my reply on identi.ca? shaunm: james_w: yeah james_w: great - 22:53 - philbull: I invited a few new contributors along shaunm: yay! philbull: We have BrunoXLambert BrunoXLambert: that would be me shaunm: um, if there's anything critical that needs to be done with yelp, chpe is on my "trusted committers" list philbull: mw crowley and oliver parsons (don't know IRC handles) philbull: care to introduce yourselves, guys? pcutler: cool, glad to see new faces oliver: hello shaunm: hey, that's great. are you guys all on gnome-doc-list? BrunoXLambert: Well, I am on the list since an hour now imp25: are there any plans to aggregate the new blog on pgo? - claude has left the room pcutler: imp25: projects blogs go on news.g.o, personal blogs go on p.g.o imp25: ah, thanks pcutler philbull: I've asked these guys to help work on writing a new help file for something using Mallard pcutler: i asked the same thing a couple months ago the first time I came across stormy's weekly update philbull: we discussed this at the meeting earlier in the week pcutler: any feeling for which app yet? shaunm: so it would be awesome if anybody interested could join gnome-doc-list, and maybe send a short email introducing yourself - 22:59 - BrunoXLambert: I'll post a message soon philbull: I'll be in touch in a day or so with some more concrete plans philbull: we can coordinate the work on gnome-doc-list pcutler: great, I look forward to it pcutler: Sorry to be rude, I need to run. If someone can mail me the log, I'll type up the minutes philbull: pcutler: I can handle that pcutler: shaunm: have a great vacation, and I don't want any emails from you after tonight pcutler: thanks shaunm: heh shaunm: thanks philbull: BrunoXLambert, oliver: do you have any questions? oliver: well, new to volunteering and everything still new but should get better over time BrunoXLambert: right now I'll do some reading about everything, so I guess I'll have questions later philbull: OK, that's cool philbull: If you have problems with anything, just email me oliver: Ok, phil will you email with further details or do we need to communicate another way? philbull: oliver: yes, I'll be in touch tomorrow probably. - 23:04 - oliver: Ok, thanks for the intro, got to go now. philbull: OK, thanks for turning up philbull: I'll be in touch shaunm: I want to make it clear to people that if you have any "this sucks" experiences with mallard, I really want to hear abut it oliver: cheers for that - oliver has left the room philbull: shaunm: don't worry, you will BrunoXLambert: hehe shaunm: heh philbull: OK guys, anything else or should we wrap up? Gwaihir: one question to shaunm: did you marked where the i18n thing should happen in the xslt files? shaunm: yes, look for "FIXME: i18n" shaunm: cannot guarantee that I marked them all, but it's a start - 23:09 - Gwaihir: ok, great, will try to study that shaunm: you might start with the simple strings like "Further Reading" in mal2html-page.xsl shaunm: template strings are harder Gwaihir: gotcha shaunm: (you think they suck for translators, you should see how much xslt hackery they involve) shaunm: all right, I need to take care of some stuff around the house now shaunm: I'll be idling, check back in an hour or so shaunm: thanks guys - 23:15 - Gwaihir: I'm leaving too, need at least 6 hours of sleep Gwaihir: shaunm: enjoy your vacation Gwaihir: good night guys! - Gwaihir has left the room philbull: I'm off too, night guys!