Re: the work on the new documentation

I didn't notice your offer to help, I just subscribed to this mailing
list. I was subscribed to this mailing list when I initially started
working on the documentation, but then I unsubscribed because the
messages to this mailing list weren't relevant for me. So that's why I
never knew about your offer to help, sorry. I'm a bit surprised though
that those people who gave you a link to the documentation in Abiword's
SVN didn't refer you to me.

Currently, the new documentation is written with Yelp in mind – the help
system of the GNOME desktop – and the idea is that the documentation for
Yelp can be converted to HTML or another file format and small
modifications to the contents are made to make the documentation
suitable for use on other Operating Systems. So using Unix/Linux to work
on the documentation would be preferred, all you need is a text editor
(for example gedit, which is included in GNOME) and Yelp (included in
GNOME).

In your e-mail you seem to imply that you think I speak for Abiword
project as a whole, but I feel more like an outsider to be honest. The
regular developers simply don't have time for writing the documentation,
so that's why I volunteered in 2007 to do it. If your offer for help
still stands, I hope you can help out. It would be a shame if all my
work would be left unfinished. You write that you are disappointed that
you didn't get any assistance in becoming a contributor, but please
understand that we all have the best intentions. If you need more
information, don't hesitate to send me an e-mail, I'll gladly help you.

On Mon, 2008-09-08 at 18:40 +0200, Marc Hoffmann wrote:
> Stop crying, I offered my help for the documentation months ago - i
> even wanted
> to translate it to german,...
> but the last, i heard from the mailing list was a mail with the link
> to the svn of the
> abiword documentation. as i asked how I can work on the uncommon
> docbook format
> on a windows machine i got no reply (i even was ready to work on Linux
> and asked for
> some hints for it), so i decided to stay just a normal abiword
> user,...
> My offer to help with the documentation is still active, but at the
> moment, i have not
> much time by myself, so i can not do very much - months ago it looks a
> little different
> - i had more time, then i wanted to have and i decided to spend it
> with something,
> that makes sense --- without success,...
> opensource projects like abiword, that are addicted to volunteers
> always cry for help
> when it is almost too late,... why don't you recruit the people, when
> they offer their
> help to you?
> I was very disappointed, that my offer to help you was trampled with
> feet like it was,...
>
> Regards Marc
>
>
>
> Alexander van Loon schrieb:
> > There's one more thing I forgot to mention for anyone who'd like to pick
> > up the work. The following links are important:
> >
> > http://library.gnome.org/devel/gdp-style-guide/stable/
> > http://library.gnome.org/devel/gnome-doc-xslt/0.8/
> > http://library.gnome.org/devel/gdp-handbook/stable/
> >
> > On Mon, 2008-09-08 at 09:20 +0200, Alexander van Loon wrote:
> >
> > > Hello all,
> > >
> > > Some of you might remember that I started working on the new
> > > documentation months ago. The documentation is not complete, but a lot
> > > of work has been done. It's probably more complete now than the current
> > > old documentation.
> > >
> > > The new documentation can be found here –
> > > http://www.abisource.com/viewvc/abiword-docs/trunk/Manual-NG/en/ – and
> > > you can open it with the command "yelp <full path to abiword.xml>". It's
> > > only readable by Yelp for now, but it shouldn't be difficult to convert
> > > it to HTML or PDF probably for those users who don't use Abiword on
> > > Unix.
> > >
> > > There is a problem though. I'm getting tired of doing this work, I don't
> > > want and/or can't spend any more time on it, except for yesterday I
> > > haven't committed anything to SVN for months. A demotivator is that for
> > > serious work when it comes to word processing I use OpenOffice and not
> > > Abiword, so I'm not really passionate about Abiword. The major
> > > demotivator is that I'm practically the only one who has been able to
> > > contribute large amounts of work to the documentation, I have been
> > > assisted by Marc Maurer from the beginning and later John Richards, but
> > > they have had very little time to work on the documentation so far.
> > >
> > > So I'm going to quit, but I hope something can be done to make the new
> > > documentation a success, it would be a shame if the current work would
> > > go to waste. Maybe the next release could include the new documentation,
> > > even if it isn't complete? If that release would also be accompanied by
> > > a call for improving the documentation (make it obvious, maybe put some
> > > text on the download page?), new contributors might be attracted who
> > > could continue the work on the documentation.
> > >
> > > Finally, because I'm going to quit I request that my SVN account will be
> > > removed.
> > >
> > > Greetings,
> > > Alexander van Loon
> > >
> > >
> > >
Received on Mon Sep 8 22:00:29 2008