Hi all,
My name is Malcolm Jacobson and I work as a Technical Writer in Brisbane, Australia. I have come to this list because I am trying to find out if it is possible to contribute to Fedora documentation on an ad-hoc basis. If I'm not in the right place I'm hoping you can point me in the right direction.
My first exposure to Linux was around 2001 (Red Hat Linux 7, I think) when the boss of the company I was working for retrenched all of our programmers and IT staff, then told me that "administering the Sendmail server is now part of your job". Imagine my joy. Since then I've experimented with various flavours of Linux, with the most recent being Ubuntu and Fedora, which brought me here.
During the installation of Fedora 8 I encountered a problem with the DNS settings I wanted to use. I read through all of the "Network Administration Tool" Help and asked a few questions on forums but couldn't resolve the issue, so I ended up posting a BugZilla report. Thanks to the incredibly helpful Harald Hoyer I found out that the fix was a simple matter of clearing a particular check box that is enabled by default. This check box isn't covered in the Network Administration Tool Help, so I thought I'd quickly update it so the next person who encountered the same problem didn't clog up BugZilla with another "notabug" report. Unfortunately, after several days searching, I can't locate the repository for this Help and I can't work out how to contribute updates to a single topic.
Is there some sort of Wiki available where people can upload/update documentation that will be included in the next release of Fedora?
Is it possible to contribute on an ad-hoc basis (e.g. a single topic), or are you only allowed to contribute if you become part of a larger project?
Unfortunately I don't have the spare time to become involved in any projects, but I would like to contribute what I can, when I can, if there is mechanism to do this.
Cheers,
Malcolm.
On Sun, 2007-11-25 at 09:44 +1000, Malcolm Jacobson wrote:
Hi all,
Hi Malcolm!
[...snip...]
During the installation of Fedora 8 I encountered a problem with the DNS settings I wanted to use. I read through all of the "Network Administration Tool" Help and asked a few questions on forums but couldn't resolve the issue, so I ended up posting a BugZilla report. Thanks to the incredibly helpful Harald Hoyer I found out that the fix was a simple matter of clearing a particular check box that is enabled by default. This check box isn't covered in the Network Administration Tool Help, so I thought I'd quickly update it so the next person who encountered the same problem didn't clog up BugZilla with another "notabug" report. Unfortunately, after several days searching, I can't locate the repository for this Help and I can't work out how to contribute updates to a single topic.
This is definitely something that should appear in the Administration Guide, under "setting up networks" or some such.
Is there some sort of Wiki available where people can upload/update documentation that will be included in the next release of Fedora?
Is it possible to contribute on an ad-hoc basis (e.g. a single topic), or are you only allowed to contribute if you become part of a larger project?
Unfortunately I don't have the spare time to become involved in any projects, but I would like to contribute what I can, when I can, if there is mechanism to do this.
Here's the rub, Malcolm: Documentation from contributors, which we welcome, has to be licensed in a way that we are free to distribute it, and that anyone else is free to copy and redistribute. We therefore must have controls in place that allow you to affirmatively license your work in that fashion. Unfortunately, right now there are a couple too many steps involved in doing this, but we are working hard to make this easier for people like yourself, who just want to help with wiki-based documentation.
In the meantime, you can visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/Join for instructions on geting a Fedora account and wiki access. It will take probably about 15-30 minutes of your time, all told, and maybe some wait time for someone to do the necessary approval and adding you to the wiki EditGroup. Apologies for the length of the process, but again, I know that Karsten has been actively pushing toward getting one-click wiki licensing for a while, and we hope it will exist soon.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your reply.
Here's the rub, Malcolm: Documentation from contributors, which we welcome, has to be licensed in a way that we are free to distribute it, and that anyone else is free to copy and redistribute. We therefore must have controls in place that allow you to affirmatively license your work in that fashion. Unfortunately, right now there are a couple too many steps involved in doing this, but we are working hard to make this easier for people like yourself, who just want to help with wiki-based documentation.
OK. I've written a fair bit of free (mainly Creative Commons licensed) content over the years, but I've never encountered the key/fingerprint process before. I look forward to the arrival of one-click licensing!
In the meantime, you can visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/Join for instructions on geting a Fedora account and wiki access.
Thanks. I had a read through the Fedora Documentation Style Guide today and I found the section on "Screenshots and Images" quite interesting. I understand the reasons why images are not preferred, but I would like to use at least one screenshot per page in my documentation. If I use more than one image per page will my documentation be rejected?
I also found a couple of typo's in the Style Guide. I'm not sure if they should be the subject of another email, so I'll just include them here:
1. On the "Content and Rendering" page
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/StyleGuide/ContentAndRendering
The second sentence is missing the word "of" between "types" and "information" (Many writers use formatting to distinguish between different types information ...).
2. On the "Dates and Times" page
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/StyleGuide/DatesAndTimes
The third sentence of the third paragraph of the "Absolute Times" section is missing the "s" in the word "use" (For example, to ue precision ...).
Cheers,
Malcolm.
On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 22:15 +1000, Malcolm Jacobson wrote:
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your reply.
Here's the rub, Malcolm: Documentation from contributors, which we welcome, has to be licensed in a way that we are free to distribute it, and that anyone else is free to copy and redistribute. We therefore must have controls in place that allow you to affirmatively license your work in that fashion. Unfortunately, right now there are a couple too many steps involved in doing this, but we are working hard to make this easier for people like yourself, who just want to help with wiki-based documentation.
OK. I’ve written a fair bit of free (mainly Creative Commons licensed) content over the years, but I’ve never encountered the key/fingerprint process before. I look forward to the arrival of one-click licensing!
As do we all! :-)
In the meantime, you can visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/Join for instructions on geting a Fedora account and wiki access.
Thanks. I had a read through the Fedora Documentation Style Guide today and I found the section on "Screenshots and Images" quite interesting. I understand the reasons why images are not preferred, but I would like to use at least one screenshot per page in my documentation. If I use more than one image per page will my documentation be rejected?
Not rejected, but likely we'd remove the screenshots unless, as the guidelines say, they're required to make sense of the text. Screenshots can't be translated easily, nor are they usually required if your text is clear. Try writing without the screenshot; you will find it makes you write more clearly since you can't fall back on the crutch of "aw, just look at the picture." :-)
Screenshots make sense when the text is really all about getting the user familiar with graphical elements. In the DUG, for example, having a screenshot of the default GUI desktop with callouts for the main menu, panels, desktop, and icons would be appropriate. In most other cases, you can simply reference GUI elements by name ("Select the 'Apply' button"). Don't use directional guides ("Find the program name in the list on the left") unless it's absolutely necessary, especially since layout can change for various reasons.
Hope that helps!
I also found a couple of typo's in the Style Guide. I'm not sure if they should be the subject of another email, so I'll just include them here:
- On the "Content and Rendering" page
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/StyleGuide/ContentAndRendering
The second sentence is missing the word "of" between "types" and "information" (Many writers use formatting to distinguish between different types information ...).
- On the "Dates and Times" page
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/StyleGuide/DatesAndTimes
The third sentence of the third paragraph of the "Absolute Times" section is missing the "s" in the word "use" (For example, to ue precision ...).
With a wiki account you could fix these yourself! :-) Thanks for the catches -- if I don't get to it fast enough, I'm sure some kind soul on the list will beat me to it.
Malcolm Jacobson wrote:
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your reply.
Here's the rub, Malcolm: Documentation from contributors, which we welcome, has to be licensed in a way that we are free to distribute it, and that anyone else is free to copy and redistribute. We therefore must have controls in place that allow you to affirmatively license your work in that fashion. Unfortunately, right now there are a couple too many steps involved in doing this, but we are working hard to make this easier for people like yourself, who just want to help with wiki-based documentation.
OK. I’ve written a fair bit of free (mainly Creative Commons licensed) content over the years, but I’ve never encountered the key/fingerprint process before. I look forward to the arrival of one-click licensing!
In the meantime, you can visit http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/Join for instructions on geting a Fedora account and wiki access.
Thanks. I had a read through the Fedora Documentation Style Guide today and I found the section on "Screenshots and Images" quite interesting. I understand the reasons why images are not preferred, but I would like to use at least one screenshot per page in my documentation. If I use more than one image per page will my documentation be rejected?
I also found a couple of typo's in the Style Guide. I'm not sure if they should be the subject of another email, so I'll just include them here:
- On the "Content and Rendering" page
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/StyleGuide/ContentAndRendering
The second sentence is missing the word "of" between "types" and "information" (Many writers use formatting to distinguish between different types information ...).
- On the "Dates and Times" page
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/StyleGuide/DatesAndTimes
The third sentence of the third paragraph of the "Absolute Times" section is missing the "s" in the word "use" (For example, to ue precision ...).
Cheers,
Malcolm.
I've fixed the 2 typos you pointed out. Good catch :)
Regards, Dan O'Brien
-
dan＠new2linux.com -
Malcolm Jacobson -
Paul W. Frields