documentation! (feedback wanted)

[Johnny Bubonic]

Hey all, I'm in school to be a tech writer and I was hoping to get some experience in before I head out to the "real world."

I thought the best way to do this was to combine my love for GNU/linux and technical documentation and hop on board a linux community and offer my services for a distribution's documentation project.

This has several advantages:
-It will allow me to show my gratuity to development communities (because I, unfortunately, lack coding expertise and knowledge- as well as graphical design, etc.)
-Provide a better service to the linux community- users, developers, etc.
-Start to build a portfolio which future employers could examine
-Encourage my name to be "in-print" (which is a great advantage for tech writers)
-Show any future employers not only examples of my abilities, but also that they are effectively being utilized in an existing context.


However, I need as many responses as I can get. If possible, let me know the following things:

-any distributions that have weak/minimal documentation (installation guides, FAQ, wiki, etc.)

-any software that has weak/minimal documentation (MAN pages lacking/not clear, not documented well on the site, etc.); preferrably under the GPL or GPLv2

-any of either with a need for documentation on their site- is the site's design unclear? etc.


And if you could include a contact e-mail or URL of the distro/software, I'd appreciate it GREATLY!

[Vergil83]

What languages can you speak (so much software doc is in english)?
What programs are YOU interested in?

That sounds like a great idea though!

[Johnny Bubonic]

Unfortunately, I only know English. However, I have many friends that know different languages from growing up elsewhere (Russian, some Polish primarily).

As for what I'm interested in, I would love to document for Gentoo (I love their community), Debian (easy way to get my name out there- probably the most "popular" distro in the context of industry), and Ubuntu and its various forks (gaining popularity at the user/hobbyist level, and they have a really strong community heirarchy).

Software I'm not too picky about. I don't think I could manage something TERRIBLY in-depth (for instance, I'm not sure how well I'd do at documenting various libraries) but I'd enjoy doing documentation for utility-type software (for instance: the GNU screen project), but I don't have a set-in-stone preference.

[bidi]

Well, I've just recently started working with GNUstep! I've been using/testing it for a few months and decided I wanted to help more. It's a very old project, but people seem to just don't like it because of it's written in Objective-C. I started writting documentation for it a few weeks ago, but haven't done much (not a lot of time). If you're interested, feel free to post something on the mailing list. The website is www.gnustep.org and the mailing list that is most read is discuss-gnustep. Keep in mind that GNUstep is a part of the GNU project, so requires copyright assignment to the FSF (all GNU projects will require that).

[Johnny Bubonic]

(Bidi? Any reference to beedis, the indian cigarettes? Or bi-directional text?)


It looks intriguing! What sort of areas could use some documentation?

[Vergil83]

I am sure there are some program that have crap doc that I can't recall currently.

This isn't exactly what you wanted but, there is http://symphonyos.com/ It is a Debian child distro, that is trying to make some new type of desktop envirnoment (mezzo desktop). I know they have little doc (they are alpha state).

I will keep my eye open and tell you if I see anything

[bidi]

(Bidi? Any reference to beedis, the indian cigarettes? Or bi-directional text?)

Not at all! It's just an abbreviation of my last name.

It looks intriguing! What sort of areas could use some documentation?

Pretty much every area needs at least a little amount of work. I know how to read code, even though I can't code very well, so I've been working on the interface documentation. The project itself is an implementation of OPENSTEP, a standard by NeXT Computer which was bought by Apple in '96 and is actually the base for MacOS X! The project itself is announced as a development enviornment, but it's actually a little more than that. There's also outside projects that extend it, which also might need some help.

[Vergil83]

Bidi, if I recally, GNUstep recently had a change in leadership. Have you seen any change in direction, "vision", etc....

[bidi]

Bidi, if I recally, GNUstep recently had a change in leadership. Have you seen any change in direction, "vision", etc....

It's still to early to tell, he was official "promoted" last month! Gregory is very enthusiastic though. There's already some pretty interesting stuff happening on the SVN repository. Pretty much, the "vision" is still roughly the same, create a cross platform development environment, but he does seem to want to make GNUstep a little more than just that, which I think is a good thing. The biggest problem with the project is the lack of interest from the community.