Hi, Foster, Margie wrote: > I think there are at least two types of documentation being discussed here: > that which a developer wants and that for an end user (the consumer). The > tech writer here at Intel is writing the end user help, and that's something > we can figure out how to open source after the first release. However, > developer documentation is wide open, AFAIK. I think there is an SDK working > group, and that might be the place to bring up this collaborative effort.
It's certainly fair to make a distinction. In fact, I'd go further than you have, and identify 4 different types of documentation: 1. API documentation - should be in the source code (Doxygen, or QDoc, or gtk-doc, or JavaDoc, or whatever) - any developer should be able to patch this. 90% of this type of documentation will be upstream, and is not specific to MeeGo 2. Code samples and "toolbox" type documentation, describing how to string together different APIs to accomplish something consequential - some of these will be documented in the source code, and some of these will be in the form of code samples and tutorials, some will be in the wiki. We should try, as we started to do in Maemo with the use-case template: http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Use_case_template to standardise these & centralise them into a kind of searchable knowledge base. Much of this will not be applicable only to MeeGo, so we should try and make sure that we're submitting docs like these upstream where possible 3. Developer guides - platform overview, development environment set-up, how to deploy an application, UI guidelines - longer documents aimed at application developers, reference documents. Mostly MeeGo specific. This is where I see a great need for read-write documentation 4. User documentation - how to use the basic desktop, core applications included with MeeGo, and also user documentation for user-developped applications (oft neglected!) - we should ensure that everyone can contribute here, where possible If you're only talking about the fourth type, then there probably isn't a major issue. The developer guides and tutorials & code samples are where it will be trickier to have something that works well. Since initial versions of MeeGo will primarily be aimed at developers, as I understand it, the middle tier of documentation is the most important to the success of the platform (in terms of rapid adoption of MeeGo as a developer platform). It's also the area where openness is most important. Cheers, Dave. -- maemo.org docsmaster Email: [email protected] Jabber: [email protected] _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
