It's time

[Jasper Huijsmans]

On 08 Mar 2003 23:13:03 -0500
Neal <nomore.office at verizon.net> wrote:

> As of Friday, 7 March 2003, I am an RXFceU.
> That is to say, I am a Retired XFce User.
> It's time for me to contribute to the project.
> 
> I have not written code since 1980 using assembler for Motorola 6800. 
> So I am no help in that regard.  
> 
> I have, however, written many specifications, evaluations,
> instructions and reports on a myriad of telecommunications projects
> under my pervue during my working career.
> 
> XFce4 is fantastic.  With some hints and guidance, I should be able to
> produce an acceptable user document. 
> 
> Olivier, please let me know if I can be of assistance.
> 

Well, I'm not Olivier, but here's my thoughts. First of all, thanks for
the offer! It would be great if you could have a look at the
documentation.

Currently there is a little documentation for the panel and several
other modules have some, mostly empty, skeleton docs set up for them.
The docs are written in docbook xml. If you're not familiar with that,
don't worry, it's rather simple. Just have a look at the existing files
and you'll see soon enough how it works.

The way the documentation is set up now is this:

* All docs install to ${prefix}/share/xfce4/doc/html/

* The general xfce 4 document is installed by the xfce-utils module.
This is the 'index.html' file. There are (will be) links to the
documentation of all components in this file.

* Every CVS module has it's own doc directory. The html can be
regenerated by typing 'make html' in the doc/html/ directory. However,
you will probably have to edit doc/xml/xfce.xsl to point to the correct
path for your docbook xsl stylesheets. The master xml file is in
doc/xml/.

I can of course convert the xml for you, or if you prefer convert plain
text docs to docbook xml.


Having said this, I have been thinking if it wouldn't be better to make
a separate xfce-doc CVS module and put all documenation in there. This
will make cross referencing easier and prevents some duplication.

We could then explain in the introduction that XFce 4 consists of
separate components and that you can choose which ones you want to run
to suit your taste. This way it would be easier to describe the XFce 4
desktop environment as a whole (as it is intended ;), IMO.

What do other people think?


Neal, please have a look at what we have now and see what you can do
with it. Let me know what I can do to help. Although I am a little short
on time at the moment I think good documentation is very important and
will do what I can to help out. 

Also, you should get CVS write access for this.

	Jasper