Hello all,
My name is Jonathan Leist. I’m new to this mailing list (but not new to Fedora), so I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself and express my interest in contributing to the Documentation Project.
I’m currently employed as an Infrastructure Engineer at software company, where my responsibilities include a mix of systems administration and software development. During my time as an engineer, I’ve contributed code to projects written in a few different languages, including PHP, Python, Bash and C/C++; I’ve also dabbled in Rust and Kotlin.
My systems administration responsibilities have also exposed me to quite a few interesting technologies, including Puppet, Docker, FPM Cookery, and many more. Perhaps more uniquely, since I work for an Email Service Provider (ESP), I also have extensive experience building, improving and maintaining email delivery systems, and I can speak extensively about authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI), STARTTLS and Mail Transfer Agents (Postfix and PowerMTA).
While I’ve never contributed documentation to any FLOSS projects like Fedora, I do possess an English degree and have written extensive documentation and numerous runbooks at my company. Beyond that, I’m extremely passionate about free software, Linux and the Fedora Project, and I am eager to give back. Fedora was the first Linux distribution that I ever installed, and it has been my distribution of choice ever since.
I’m happy to help this project in any capacity possible, but I’m particularly interested in writing documentation for new users, as I’ve only been using Fedora for a few years myself. I’m also painfully familiar with the struggles that are associated with maintaining development environments as a Linux user in a mostly non-Linux office, and I would love to channel some of my past frustrations into new articles. This is a perfect example of the type of article that helped me avoid hours of troubleshooting on my workstation (and which I’d like to emulate):
https://fedoramagazine.org/docker-and-fedora-32/
As of right now, I (conservatively) estimate I should be able to contribute ten or more hours per week to the project. I live in the Eastern Time Zone, so my local time is either UTC -4:00 or UTC -5:00, depending on the time of year. Below you’ll find my GPG key:
pub rsa2048/AA2CD859 2020-09-16 [SC] [expires: 2021-09-16]
D7AA3A97BB64CB8D2524B7A4A3E4B552AA2CD859
uid [ultimate] Jonathan Leist (Fedora Project) <jonathan(a)jonathanleist.com>
sub rsa2048/AC885C65 2020-09-16 [E] [expires: 2021-09-16]
I look forward to speaking with you all in the future.
--
Jonathan Leist
Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.
Hi folks,
TL; DR.
Akashdeep/t0xic0der here. I would love to hear what you think about a project that I am proposing for Fedora's representation in this year's Google Summer of Code. I have built a functional prototype of
the project (which you would find [here](https://github.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias/), the documentation [here](https://github.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias/wiki/Usage) and the screenshots [here](https://github.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias/wiki/Screenshots)) so you would able to know what the project can potentially provide. You can find the project proposition [here](https://pagure.io/mentored-projects/issue/85). As this project pertains to facilitate convenient documentation creation specifically, it is vital for me to know what you think about the project.
IWRTLV. (I wanna read the long version :P)
Take a look at the following excerpt which was taken from the proposition I wrote (Check issue https://pagure.io/mentored-projects/issue/85 of mentored-projects for the entire content and the conversation regarding it).
<EXCERPT START>
- There has been this web application I have been building a functional prototype for, which allows for synchronized authorship of documents in an unintrusive manner. The project is called Syngrafias.
- To explain this in a better way, people who have used Google Docs for editing documents collaboratively know how the changes made to the document are actively synchronized to all the collaborators during the time of editing. Syngrafias does that but with a much more distributive approach to it - as here the changes made in the document in the absence of the other user would not be synchronized, thereby seamlessly creating (say) a fork of the same document. ([See the attached image collabnt.png](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias/master…)
- The unintrusiveness in the document editing can be better explained if I draw parallelism with Jupyterlab. Just like in Jupyterlab, we have distinctive cells here for editing text. It is a simple mechanism but with much greater functionality as it allows you to selectively share the parts of the document you want collaborators to edit and rearrange the parts of the document by simply using a drag-n-drop operation. I have added in Summernote for WYSIWYG editing for each cell. ([See the attached image opendocs.png](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias/master…)
- Of course, there is activity tracking so any change in the document title, cell title or cell content gets logged and activities like cell creation and removal are synchronized across all connected clients. The way I see it, this project can bring about radical positive changes to the way Fedora's project documentation are worked upon collaboratively. Also, if I simply replace Summernote with CodeMirror - this can even be used for collaboratively editing code snippets on-the-go. ([See the attached image activlog.png](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias/master…)
- With 57 commits as of the time of writing the idea description, the project is only getting started and only the bare functionalities of the project are complete. You can find the repository [here](https://github.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias), the usage instructions [here](https://github.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias/wiki/Usage) and the screenshots [here](https://github.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias/wiki/Screenshots). There are tons that we can expand upon if this ends up becoming a project for GSoC. I would very much love for you folks to try out the project, let know what you think about it and your valuable suggestions for it to become a GSoC project - if it can. I would be obliged.
<EXCERPT END>
The reason why I wish to propose this (outside) project for Fedora's GSoC representation is because it has the potential to be a project assisting the distro/community (e.g. Bodhi and Mote) by making the process of documentation creation much more efficient and conveniently collaborative (as compared to the Pagure and Antora-bound method that we use right now). Do note that the project (I believe) aims to complement the tried-and-tested systems in place as of now with the features it has (and plans to have).
The way I see it - the project I am proposing here can complement to Antora's functioning by cutting down on the mandated build times to generate a preview (as we have a WYSIWYG feature) and deferred collaboration (highly subjective though as active synchronization would mostly benefit only those who are living at the same timezone and decide to work together for the same time). I cannot emphasize enough how beneficial it can be to try out the project prototype to understand how capable the project can be. You can find the [project page](https://github.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias) and the [project wiki](https://github.com/t0xic0der/syngrafias/wiki) links here. (or drop a response expressing willingness for a demonstration and maybe, we can schedule a video meet ;-))
As the proposed project marks a departure from the kinds of project that were used to be proposed for GSoC, it would be vital for me to know what you think about the proposed idea and the likeliness of adoption of the ideas stated in the project. How effective do you think it can be (if it can be selected as a GSoC project) and what can be done to make it better?
Thanks in advance. Looking forward to your responses.
Yours faithfully,
Akashdeep Dhar
On 9/4/20 9:53 AM, Ben Cotton wrote:
>> Alternately, I'm sure the docs team could pretty easily set up a repo
>> for legal docs that works like the packaging guidelines repo.
>>
> ...now that Bryan Sutula and I are taking the front-line legal role,
> we're both in agreement that this is a good thing and we should do it.
> Now we just have to plan the work. :-)
This would be an awesome project to bring Fedora Legal documentation and
policy into the 2020s. Pure plaintext wikis make me frown.
I have learned a lot about AsciiDoc and Antora over the years and could
probably advise on some best practices for structuring content. Modules
are a really helpful but poorly utilized feature of organizing Antora
docs in Fedora. Would love to see it get used well in a project like this.
(P.S. – Yes, I am volunteering for some of this work!)
--
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory (he/him)
https://jwf.io
TZ=America/New_York
Hi all!
My Nest recording about how to review and edit the D&I Team docs is
live. I think this is a helpful walkthrough for anyone editing Fedora Docs!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58jOkR1y0e4
Let me know if you have any questions. Don't forget the D&I Docs
mentoring session is tomorrow (3 Sept) at 15:30 UTC.
--
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory (he/him)
https://jwf.io
TZ=America/New_York