On Wednesday 16 November 2011 11:12:43 am Darrell Anderson wrote:
We have none. :)
In the past I mentioned my background in technical writing and an interest in coordinating a user's guide. No promises but I want to get something moving.
I have PDF copies of three KDE3 user guides. All are licensed to allow using the text in other documents.
KDEUserGuideFinal.pdf: Published by the United Nations Development Programme’s Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP)Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (heavily focused on PCLinuxOS)
opensuse110_kdequick.pdf
opensuse110_kdeuser.pdf
Although I could convert those documents to text files with various conversion tools, I would like to find the original source files. For you OpenSuse folks, you might be able to find those two document source files.
The Kubuntu people at one time had a KDE 3 user's guide. I can find HTML remnants of such a guide on the web.
Tim, as the one-time Kubuntu coordinator for KDE3 I'm hoping you might be able to find sources for that document.
Long term I want to establish a process to single source the text to various mediums: a PDF, HTML, wiki, etc. Single sourcing text files long been has the Holy Grail of technical writing and frankly, no optimal solution yet exists despite what anybody might claim. DocBook, DITA, XML all were supposed to provide that single source miracle but none have fulfilled any tech writer's dream. Nonetheless, if we get our hands on the original source files for these documents we then find a big step in the right direction toward providing a much-needed Trinity user's guide. If not we still can convert the information using raw conversion tools.
Thanks!
Darrell
I might not be a technical writer, but I've written a few mini-guides and I'm still newbie enough to work up some sensible rough drafts. I generally don't like using someone else's guides, partly because I'm too lazy to take the time to read them, and I tend to be a real stickler for grammar, detail, and easy to follow directions ;-)
If you are going to use the PDFs, we might be able to coordinate, perhaps get more people involved. My only problem is if we use the wiki, there have been some complaints about the way it saves the markups and then converts them to a different markup format, memorizing one markup is hard enough without having to juggle two on one wiki.
-- Kristopher Gamrat Ark Linux webmaster http://www.arklinux.org/