Attachment 'gnome-docs-log-28Jun09.txt'

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   1 - Wednesday June 24 2009, 23:22 -
   2 philbull: I've seen a few screencasts from betterdesktop, for example
   3 philbull: I'd like to get a collection of user tests together which the community as a whole can use
   4 philbull: (Maybe not as fancy as betterdesktop's, though)
   5 philbull: I'd also like to see us doing user tests of this sort as part of the routine of writing new documentation
   6 
   7 - 23:41 -
   8 philbull: hey, I'm off now. 'night
   9 
  10 - Sunday June 28 2009, 21:49 -
  11  - BrunoXLambert has joined the room
  12 
  13 - 22:01 -
  14 pcutler: shaunm: you here?
  15 pcutler: who's here / present for the doc meeting?
  16  * philbull is
  17  * Gwaihir (Milo) is
  18  * BrunoXLambert is
  19 j1mc: hi all 
  20  * imp25 is here to listen
  21 Gwaihir: hi j1mc!
  22 pcutler: hi jim
  23 j1mc: i'm at another mtg... won't get to participate much
  24  * andre slacking and reading the backlog
  25 pcutler: we'll get started and see if our fearless leader shows up
  26 pcutler: agenda is here:  http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Meeting20090628
  27 shaunm: I"m here
  28 shaunm: sorry, was dropping off the cat at a friend's
  29 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
  30 pcutler: great  
  31 pcutler: our recap for the board on woscon is here:  http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject/Community/Woscon2009
  32 
  33 - 22:06 -
  34 pcutler: if people have seen the blog posts, any questions about the conference?
  35 pcutler: Gwaihir, shaunm, philbull and myself were there
  36 pcutler: or any of you above feel free to add your comments about woscon
  37 pcutler: ok, next topic
  38 pcutler: one of the things we talked about at woscon was "know your audience"
  39 pcutler: and we talked about the docs team
  40 pcutler: and thought it might help if we grouped our team in to 3 groups:  writers, editors and translators
  41 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
  42 pcutler: http://live.gnome.org/DocumentationProject
  43 pcutler: though Gwaihir has been working on the Translators page  
  44 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
  45 Gwaihir: just a note: the translators page is more of a "get in touch with your team"
  46 shaunm: so I was reading a thread on the xfce4-dev list from last month about documentation
  47 shaunm: (this is on-topic, really)
  48 shaunm: one of the things discussed was documentation translations
  49  * claude is listening
  50 shaunm: and a number of people seemed to feel that documentation translation is an additional skill
  51 
  52 - 22:11 -
  53 shaunm: and that there should probably be people who focus on doing just that
  54 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?
  55 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
  56  - oliver has joined the room
  57 claude: for small teams it's already a huge effort to get ui translations done
  58 claude: so doc translations is often a nice-to-have for them
  59 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
  60 shaunm: ok
  61 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
  62 shaunm: in part because there's just a lot to translate, and that's just the way of the world
  63 
  64 - 22:16 -
  65 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
  66 shaunm: so the small teams have bigger problems to worry about.  I'm absolutely not going to get on anyone's back
  67  - BrunoXLambert has left the room
  68  - james_w has left the room
  69  - Gwaihir has left the room
  70  - dino has left the room
  71  - icez has left the room
  72 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
  73 pcutler: darn netsplit  :/
  74 shaunm: yeah
  75 shaunm: you're turning it over to me?
  76 pcutler: shaunm: yup, recap the gnome 2.28 / 3.0 mallard stuff you started to talk about wed  
  77 pcutler: but I'll give it a minute to see if the netsplit comes back
  78 shaunm: oh, ok
  79 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
  80 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
  81 claude: andre: yep
  82  * andre shuts up again
  83 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 
  84 
  85 - 22:21 -
  86 pcutler: that way, if anyone has questions, or is new, there's some time set aside to talk about anything related to docs
  87 pcutler: i think based on turnout the last 2 weeks (we've done one each week) bi-weekly would probably be fine
  88 pcutler: irc can be hit or miss, so I think it's a nice touch, personally
  89 shaunm: pcutler: for the time being, sure.  we can always up the frequency later
  90 shaunm: but let's be careful that we don't stop doing them because of low turnout.  persistence will pay off
  91  - BrunoXLambert has joined the room
  92  - icez has joined the room
  93 shaunm: or, at least, non-persistence is guaranteed not to pay off, so we might as well try persistence
  94 pcutler: heh, that's a good way to put it
  95  - Gwaihir has joined the room
  96 shaunm: ok, we have Gwaihir back
  97 Gwaihir: sorry guys... I have a 10s lag here...
  98 pcutler: yup, I think that's everyone except dino
  99  - james_w has joined the room
 100  - dino has joined the room
 101 BrunoXLambert: 10 seconds lag sounds cool i got disconected
 102 shaunm: now that we have everyone back
 103 pcutler: np, you didn't miss anything important, just gave an update on community IRC meetings, and recommended bi-weekly time
 104 Gwaihir: ok, great
 105 shaunm: I'm not trying to demand anything out of the translation teams.
 106 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
 107 shaunm: or subscribes to our list
 108 
 109 - 22:26 -
 110  * Gwaihir nods
 111 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?"
 112 shaunm: just trying to open up communication
 113 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
 114 shaunm: yeah
 115 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
 116 pcutler: write every day!
 117 shaunm: man, that lasted two days for me
 118 pcutler: shaunm: want to give an update on your plans for mallard and gnome-doc-utils / yelp for 2.28 and the challenges involved?
 119 pcutler: and an update on the build work you did this weekend
 120 shaunm: ok
 121 
 122 - 22:32 -
 123 shaunm: so after this meeting, I'm more or less out of things for the next three weeks
 124 shaunm: I'll be back about a week or so before feature freeze, iirc
 125 shaunm: so where we're at now is likely to be *close* to where we'll be for 2.28
 126 shaunm: where we're at now:
 127 shaunm: I've just added support for mallard documents into the build utilities in gnome-doc-utils
 128 shaunm: you can now build, verify, and install your documents
 129 shaunm: the documents won't show up in yelp, because there's no scrollkeeper/rarian integration
 130 shaunm: I mean, you can view them in yelp, but they won't show up in the categorical listing of documents
 131 shaunm: I plan on gutting that stuff for 3.0 anyway
 132 shaunm: I still need to set up the mallard stylesheets for localization
 133 shaunm: I did spend some time today addressing rtl issues in the mallard stylesheets
 134 shaunm: stylesheet internationalization work is an evening of not terribly difficult work.  unfortunately, I'm out of evenings
 135 shaunm: um, I'll say more about that in a minute
 136 
 137 - 22:37 -
 138 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
 139 shaunm: e.g. you get placeholders for all inline markup, which is pretty sucky
 140 shaunm: I'm told there are issues going po->xml
 141 shaunm: fortunately, you don't need me for this, because I don't maintain xml2po
 142 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?
 143 shaunm: if DonS appears from the mist and does it, yes
 144 shaunm: otherwise, very very unlikely
 145 Gwaihir: danilo is the maintainer of xml2po, did he get back to you?
 146 pcutler: ok, thanks
 147 shaunm: I also don't think it's particularly important
 148 shaunm: I'd be surprised if a substantial number of people access application help that way
 149 pcutler: do we have to have that for an application like Empathy or Banshee to ship mallard documents in 2.28?
 150 shaunm: no
 151 shaunm: those applications will be able to open their help files in yelp
 152 pcutler: got it, thanks
 153 shaunm: you just won't be able to browse to their help files if you open yelp from the System menu or something
 154 
 155 - 22:43 -
 156 shaunm: so stylesheet localization
 157 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
 158 shaunm: I will try to check my email every day or two.  but I probably won't check mailing list folders
 159 shaunm: I also won't be able to commit anything
 160 pcutler: enjoy your vacation  
 161 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
 162 shaunm: what else do you need to know about the current state of things?
 163 pcutler: that's all I can think of, unless anyone has any questions?
 164 shaunm: Gwaihir, philbull: did either of you do the build stuff for the empathy docs?
 165 Gwaihir: shaunm: not yet, I'm waiting g-d-u to be in ubuntu dev version
 166 
 167 - 22:48 -
 168 pcutler: Gwaihir: do you think you'll ship the new empathy docs in 2.28, or is that too aggressive a timeline?
 169 Gwaihir: james_w: any idea when g-d-u 0.17.2 will be in karmic?
 170 james_w: Gwaihir: hey, you need g-d-u 0.17.2?
 171 james_w: snap 
 172 Gwaihir: james_w: 
 173 james_w: I can do that now if you like
 174 Gwaihir: james_w: lovely! 
 175 Gwaihir: pcutler: maybe it's possible to do it
 176 Gwaihir: I can concentrate on that and have probably a good coverage of the application
 177 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
 178 Gwaihir: at least the most used and requested features and questions that could arise from those features
 179 pcutler: Gwaihir: cool
 180 pcutler: that's it for the formal agenda, what kind of questions / comments are there?
 181 shaunm: oh, I will roll a yelp release tonight
 182 shaunm: for that pesky bug I fixed for pcutler
 183 pcutler: oh, and we have a spiffy new blog:   http://blogs.gnome.org/docs
 184 pcutler: shaunm: thanks
 185 shaunm: and also increment the required version of g-d-u in configure
 186 Gwaihir: we found some work for james_w so... 
 187 james_w: shaunm: hey, did you see my reply on identi.ca?
 188 shaunm: james_w: yeah
 189 james_w: great
 190 
 191 - 22:53 -
 192 philbull: I invited a few new contributors along
 193 shaunm: yay!
 194 philbull: We have BrunoXLambert
 195 BrunoXLambert: that would be me
 196 shaunm: um, if there's anything critical that needs to be done with yelp, chpe is on my "trusted committers" list
 197 philbull: mw crowley and oliver parsons (don't know IRC handles)
 198 philbull: care to introduce yourselves, guys?
 199 pcutler: cool, glad to see new faces
 200 oliver: hello 
 201 shaunm: hey, that's great.  are you guys all on gnome-doc-list?
 202 BrunoXLambert: Well, I am on the list since an hour now
 203 imp25: are there any plans to aggregate the new blog on pgo?
 204  - claude has left the room
 205 pcutler: imp25: projects blogs go on news.g.o, personal blogs go on p.g.o
 206 imp25: ah, thanks pcutler
 207 philbull: I've asked these guys to help work on writing a new help file for something using Mallard
 208 pcutler: i asked the same thing a couple months ago the first time I came across stormy's weekly update
 209 philbull: we discussed this at the meeting earlier in the week
 210 pcutler: any feeling for which app yet?
 211 shaunm: so it would be awesome if anybody interested could join gnome-doc-list, and maybe send a short email introducing yourself
 212 
 213 - 22:59 -
 214 BrunoXLambert: I'll post a message soon
 215 philbull: I'll be in touch in a day or so with some more concrete plans
 216 philbull: we can coordinate the work on gnome-doc-list
 217 pcutler: great, I look forward to it
 218 pcutler: Sorry to be rude, I need to run.  If someone can mail me the log, I'll type up the minutes
 219 philbull: pcutler: I can handle that
 220 pcutler: shaunm: have a great vacation, and I don't want any emails from you after tonight
 221 pcutler: thanks
 222 shaunm: heh
 223 shaunm: thanks 
 224 philbull: BrunoXLambert, oliver: do you have any questions?
 225 oliver: well, new to volunteering and everything still new but should get better over time
 226 BrunoXLambert: right now I'll do some reading about everything, so I guess I'll have questions later
 227 philbull: OK, that's cool
 228 philbull: If you have problems with anything, just email me
 229 oliver: Ok, phil will you email with further details or do we need to communicate another way?
 230 philbull: oliver: yes, I'll be in touch tomorrow probably.
 231 
 232 - 23:04 -
 233 oliver: Ok, thanks for the intro, got to go now.
 234 philbull: OK, thanks for turning up
 235 philbull: I'll be in touch
 236 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
 237 oliver: cheers for that
 238  - oliver has left the room
 239 philbull: shaunm: don't worry, you will 
 240 BrunoXLambert: hehe
 241 shaunm: heh
 242 philbull: OK guys, anything else or should we wrap up?
 243 Gwaihir: one question to shaunm: did you marked where the i18n thing should happen in the xslt files?
 244 shaunm: yes, look for "FIXME: i18n"
 245 shaunm: cannot guarantee that I marked them all, but it's a start
 246 
 247 - 23:09 -
 248 Gwaihir: ok, great, will try to study that
 249 shaunm: you might start with the simple strings like "Further Reading" in mal2html-page.xsl
 250 shaunm: template strings are harder
 251 Gwaihir: gotcha
 252 shaunm: (you think they suck for translators, you should see how much xslt hackery they involve)
 253 shaunm: all right, I need to take care of some stuff around the house now
 254 shaunm: I'll be idling, check back in an hour or so
 255 shaunm: thanks guys
 256 
 257 - 23:15 -
 258 Gwaihir: I'm leaving too, need at least 6 hours of sleep
 259 Gwaihir: shaunm: enjoy your vacation
 260 Gwaihir: good night guys!
 261  - Gwaihir has left the room
 262 philbull: I'm off too, night guys!

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