[Scribus] Manual draft for scribus 1.4 on the Wiki

[PLinnell]

On Monday 22 August 2005 01:33, Christoph Sch?fer wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I just added a draft for a yet-to-come scribus manual. At the
> moment it only contains the outline, and I would suggest, that no
> text be contributed until the outline has found its final form.
>
> The idea behind it is that the documentation can keep up with the
> development speed of 1.3x, since 1.4 will be a major leap forward,
> and older tutorials probably lose much of their value. With the
> release of 1.4 a manual would be available that can be integrated
> into the help browser or be translated. After having done the
> layout in scribus, it would even be possible to print an "official"
> manual.
>
> You may notice that there's no need to write each chapter from
> scratch. Much of the necessary content can be copied from the docs
> (if the authors agree) or other Wiki articles.
>
> Those of you interested in contributing, please have a look at the
> outline. Change it or enhance it, but, again, please don't
> contribute any text (other than headlines, of course) yet.
>
> I suggest using either the Wiki discussion tab or the list to
> decide if the outline has matured enough to add content.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Christoph

Hi,

The docs are a bit behind. That I clearly know. A lot of 
infrastructure bits have been overhauled which have slowed updates. 
Over the past couple of weeks, I have put a fair amount of updates 
into CVS and plenty to come. 

My work will focus on having completely updated and comprehensive docs 
for the 1.2. branch before tackling 1.3.x  Those are appearing bit by 
bit in the 1.2.x branch. They are slowly coming online on:
http://docs.scribus.net 

While it is great to see all the new toys and features in 1.3.x, we 
are far from a finished 1.4. So, we have time.

The license I chose for the docs was chosen *very* 
carefully after a lot of research and discussion with Franz at the 
time. That decision *has* been made. That is not subject to debate. 

Placing docs content on the wiki is not appropriate IMO. The wiki's 
best use is to point at the official stuff wherever possible and for 
user to user help. Maciej and others have done some wonderful work 
there and should continue. The glossary is also a very welcome 
addition. 

In my strongly held view, the wiki is not an ideal place for working 
on manual drafts for a whole bunch of reasons technically, and in the 
case of Scribus, esthetically. More about that in a separate mail 
coming soon.

We have begun negotiations for printing a manual with publishers. 
Craig and I are planning to dedicate a substantial amount of time for 
this in the coming months. Rest assured, this has our full 
attention. :)

Personally, I truly wish, I or one of the other team members had been 
contacted off-list, via IRC or even the bug tracker, well before this 
was started. It would have prevented some wasted and duplicated 
effort.

A much better use of everyone's time and energy is to update the 
excellent tutorial written by Niyam Bhushan. I specifically asked him 
to write that, *not* me for some very good reasons. That Niyam is a  
professional writer shows. He graciously licensed it under the FDL 
for others to enhance and update. 

*That*  would be good for Scribus and for Scribus users.

I most certainly do appreciate the enthusiasm and efforts people have 
made for Scribus. My aim is to channel that in a constructive manner.

Cordially,

Peter

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