Paul Cutler, a member of the GNOME documentation team, has said that he wants to make documentation cool again.  He used some different phrasing (ok, he actually said, he wants to make it “sexy,” again, but I don’t really feel like going there), but what I take his comment to mean is that he wants to make documentation something that people see as technically innovative and relevant to users, even if most users instinctively turn to Google as their first line of support.  After all, Google’s search results don’t just grow on trees – the content that comes up in all of those search results has to come from somewhere.  Why shouldn’t the answers to user questions come from carefully prepared and researched documentation?

I don’t say this to denigrate blog posts, forums, or IRC support networks – that’s where users get most of their support these days.  Comprehensive documentation has its place, though.

With that in mind, I’m making initial, but steady progress on the Xfce 4.8 documentation, and really want to improve the Xubuntu documentation.  (I’m actually a bit ashamed of its current state given the beauty that is the rest of Xubuntu 9.10.)  I will be at UDS (though, unfortunately, only for the last two days), and look forward to meeting with fellow doc-team members, and anyone else who would like to discuss documentation and translations.

Before I do that, though, let me pause to reflect on the fact that I haven’t updated this blog since the month of May.  In the words of a wise master, “Sorry, I’ve been trying to think of stuff to put here.”

Back to considering documentation, though.  Per my post to the Xfce developer mailing list, I have proposed that any newly-written Xfce end-user documentation be licensed under the Creative Commons CC-by-SA 3.0 Unported license.  This would be a change from the documentation’s current license of GPL v2.

My post to the mailing list covers several of the advantages of using a CC-by-SA 3.0 license for end-user documentation, but I’m hoping to get some additional input on items that we may want to consider as part of making such a switch.  For example:

• Although the CC-by-SA 3.0 license would apply to new content, what qualifies as “new content,” when some of our content may include instructing users where to click to perform certain actions?  Certainly, a good portion of this language may remain the same in such cases.
• Is it possible to license code snippets under the GPL, while the rest of the documentation is licensed as CC-by-SA 3.0?  If the answer to that question is, “Yes,” would a GPL-specific notice need to be provided alongside the code sample, or could the GPL notice be provided in a less visually-obtrusive spot within the documentation?  (As a note, I don’t forsee a great deal of code samples within the end-user system documentation, but I want to make sure we have our bases covered in this regard.)
• What else might the group need to consider as part of making such a switch?

Thus far, the reception to using CC-by-SA 3.0 has been good amongst the developers, and several of them have already indicated a willingness to relicense their GPL v2 documents as CC-by-SA 3.0.  That, combined with the fact that I think contacting any existing Xfce documentation contributors would be much easier than in larger projects, leads me to think that re-licensing existing content isn’t out of the picture, either.

I know that a number of other projects have recently made a switch to CC-by-SA 3.0, though, so I am hopeful that I’ll be able to get some good input from others, and we can get this settled in short order.  Thanks very much!

One item is an update to the website.  Xubuntu.org is in need of a refresh!  We’ve had a couple of starts and stops on updating it over the last two releases, but nothing noteworthy ever came of it, so this time I’m putting together a project plan that will break the tasks down into smaller chunks with a clear plan for getting things in place.

I’m not going to guarantee that things will work like clockwork, and I’m not even sure who we’re going to get to help out with the website, but I figure that setting a plan with individual bits that people can do one-by-one is more likely to garner success than handing someone the keys to a base Drupal installation and saying, “Have at it!  Let us know when you’re done!”

I’m sure I’ll have more news on that once I’ve got the basic project plan in order, and (of course) we’ll be seeking out help with the website then, too.  If you think you might want to help out, please make a note of it – place a bookmark in the Firefox 3.0 of your mind.  :]  Or you can just read this blog aggregator thingy, and look for more info about the website project plan when I write about it.  Perhaps that would be better than trying to integrate Firefox 3.0 with your brain.

For now, though, work continues on adding poetic, beautiful content to the wiki, and a few documentation ideas are being tossed around amongst Xubuntu folks.  It’s kind of hard(y) to believe that the first Alpha release for Intrepid is less than a week away, but I suppose it’s how things go.

Also, I know it’s not much notice, but tomorrow (Wednesday, 2008-03-26) Jono Bacon is leading a Xubuntu-focused meeting in the #ubuntu-meeting channel on the Freenode IRC network.  The meeting will be held at 1900 UTC (2pm Chicago time).  We’re going to discuss Xubuntu’s mission and strategy, and discuss how to pull in some additional development and packaging help.  The Xubuntu team has had a bit of turnover as a result of some internal disputes over default package selection recently, and we think that coming to some kind of a consensus on our project goals will help focus our efforts and help put some of the conflict to rest.

I feel like Xubuntu is moving in a good direction, though.  Cody Somerville looks to be the person who will be leading the project, and he has a good idea of what Xubuntu is about, is technically proficient, and knows how to argue a point rather than getting mixed up in a bunch of jibba jabba.  All good qualities to have in a project leader.  (Cody also made that wiki menu bar on the Xubuntu wiki.)  As much as anyone pays attention to a wiki, perhaps having a well-set wiki with clear paths to help people start getting involved will help things along a little bit, too.

I’m preparing an interblags post that will contain 8.04 reasons for why Ubuntu and Kubuntu users should consider using Xubuntu (it might be more like 8.04 reasons why I like Xubuntu . . . I’m not sure), but it’s not ready yet.  I only have 7.04 reasons so far.  My post should be Hardy, not Feisty.

1) http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#policy
2) http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#devref
3) http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#maint-guide
4) https://wiki.kubuntu.org/PackagingGuide
5) https://wiki.kubuntu.org/PbuilderHowto
6) https://wiki.kubuntu.org/PackagingGuide/Lists/DocumentationResources

He sent them out to the mailing list in advance of a packaging session that’s being held this Sunday at the College of DuPage, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to cram into our session that day, but it should be a good start for those of us who aren’t familiar with packaging at all.  As someone who has primarily been focused on assisting with documentation, hopefully some day I’ll at least know how to package the set of docs that we create. 

One thing that stands out to me in the second article, though, is the point about release notes. We didn’t have release notes ready for the final Beta and RC of Xubuntu 7.10, and the final release notes for 7.10 weren’t put together until after the official release. We need to do better with that. I guess I’ll be studying up on what makes good release notes.

The Xubuntu documentation turned out ok for the Gutsy Gibbon release – it was certainly much better than it had been for the Edgy and Feisty releases, but we still didn’t reach our goals.  We did a lot of work on the docs, but without the efforts of Luzius Thöny at the very end, I don’t think that the docs would have been shippable.

Xubuntu Hardy Heron (Xubuntu 8.04) will be a long-term release, so I want to make sure that the documentation is top-notch.  The good news is that we already have a good base to work from (we don’t even have to copy everything over from Ubuntu from scratch like we did before), and we also have some people who have some documentation experience under their belt now.  This is good.

I’m not sure how else I’ll be able to contribute to the Xubuntu effort this time around.  I’ve started a new job that is more demanding than my prior jobs, so that has to take priority.  I’d still like to contribute to Xubuntu, though.  I enjoy it, and the people involved with the project.

As for the site’s appearance, I’m using a modified version of the Misty Looks Wordpress theme. I liked the layout of Matthew East’s page, so I’ve taken a fair amount (okay, alot) from that, and have otherwise mostly worked to make the page a little wider, and (in case you haven’t noticed) to give it the colors of Xubuntu. I’ll be tweaking the CSS to clean up a few elements eventually (the vertical spacing between the blogroll links is a little wide for my taste, and the way I’ve removed the header image is a bit of a hack), but the site looks good enough for now. It’s pretty straighforward in appearance, but I’m just really getting to know CSS, and hopefully I will learn more as I go along. If the site renders strangely on your computer, please let me know.

As for FOSS-related activities, we had an in-person meeting of the Ubuntu-Chicago Local Community Team last weekend. It was held immediately prior to the Chicago GNU/Linux User Group meeting, so there were a number of Chicago Lug members present, and at least one person from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s LUG was there, too. Although we frequently collaborate with members of the Chicago Lug, it’s good to see some opportunities to work with members of the UIC Lug, too. We’re going to be working up some educational sessions, and some informal hackfests with folks from UIC, and I’m looking forward to it.

Xubuntu Gutsy Gibbon documentation is coming along. I’m going to be doing some more work on it today. It’s my first foray into documentation, so it’s been fun trying to learn the ins and outs of docbook. Because we’ve used the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn documentation (thanks, Ubuntu!) we’ve had to remove or change Ubuntu-specific elements to suit Xubuntu, and we’ve had to make sure the documentation is current for this release. It hasn’t been too challenging, but I think we’re still trying to wrap our heads around the .ent files. I think we’re close, though.

Well, this is all for now. I hope the new site works well. Thanks for visiting.

We also have to do some additional work on the specification for the Xubuntu Documentation Browser, or x-d-b, as it is being called. “Xubuntu Documentation Browser” is just a lot to type out.

This weekend is BARcamp Chicago, and it runs all through the weekend. For what ever reason, I didn’t know that it ran 24-hours through the whole weekend. Yeah. As if I’ll be awake for all of it.

I’ve applied for Ubuntu membership, but the next community council meeting falls at the exact moment of a meeting that I have to attend in Eagan, Minnesota, which is near Minneapolis. I’ve pushed myself to the end of the line of membership applications, hoping that they’ll be able to fit me in somehow. *fingers crossed*

Kevin is leading things up, and though things are still in preliminary stages, I think it will go well enough. It sounds like we’ll have a mix of application-specific talks, some coding talks, some work on understanding the Gnome frameworks and UI conventions. … It sounds like there’s room for everyone to participate.

After that, Kevin, Tristan and I walked over to 400 S. Wells and met up with a group of volunteers from Free Geek Chicago for an organizational meeting. I hadn’t been out to Free Geek since the second week in April, so I was excited to hear that the group is starting to use Xubuntu Feisty Fawn on the computers we build – we had previously used Xubuntu Dapper Drake.

In the words of Taylor, “Feisty Fawn is the bomb.” It was funny to hear him say it like that, but it also felt very good. I had known Feisty was good, but you sometimes take things for granted when you work closely with them. You see how much better something can be, and lose sight of how good it already is Even though I’m not a developer, it was nice to get positive feedback about a project I had assisted with.

I told them that myself and at least one other person are going to be hacking on some Xubuntu documentation this summer, and they were excited to hear it. They want to have more documentation and educational resources available for people who earn or purchase their computers. After all, what good is a free computer if you aren’t familiar with the OS and you don’t know how to use it? Dave and I laughed about being baffled by the huge lists of installable programs when we first were using Linux. The range of choices can be overwhelming.

As usual, there’s a lot of activity in the free and open source software world in Chicago. I’m still glad to be a part of it.