Re: the work on the new documentation

Hello Alexander,

i offered my help in april under the topic "User manual in german". J.M.
Maurer gave me the link
to the svn of the manual - but i'm not very common with the docbook
format. and it is difficult
to work with it under windows.
To one of my last mails under that topic you answered by yourself, that
you agree with the others,
that it wouldn't a good idea to translate the old manual to german, but
that you could need some help
the new english manual. I answered a week later that it would be a nice
idea to take part at the work
on the new english manual, but that i needed some advice how to do it
and especially for handling
the docbook format - but i never got anymore answers to that topic, so i
left it.

sorry that i was a little rude in my mail, but it made me a little bit
angry to read this "cry for help" as i
offered you my help months ago.

so you said you now work with Yelp - to work with Linux Software is no
problem for me - i can use
a whole distribution in a virtual machine and i have Suse Linux 11 on my
external Harddrive installed,
so i can boot it every time i needed, and it is no problem to install
all needed packets - for Yelp or
for Docbook,..

Regards Marc

Alexander van Loon schrieb:
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
Received on Mon Sep 8 22:47:37 2008