oops, address typo in the initial mail On Wed, 29 Sep 2010 21:59:56 +0200 Jos Poortvliet wrote: Hi,

On Wednesday 29 September 2010 20:27:11 Javier Llorente wrote:

...

Hello there,

I was thinking that having an openSUSE Handbook (or handbuch ;) in pdf format ready to be downloaded, printed and even ready to be sent to a publishing company is a good idea.

Ambitious, but a good idea. We can do the writing either on the wiki or in piratepads (but piratepad has been acting up lately, I really really hope someone feels like setting up an Etherpad for openSUSE).

I am not convinced. * Javier's idea was to produce documentation in different output formats - at least HTML and PDF. I would like to add ePUB and ASCII. * It was pointed out that there different projects producing and/or reusing openSUSE documentation * There is a need to be able to share the documentation All this does not sound like a wiki or *pad is the tool of choice. Once you choose to use these tools it is pretty hard or even impossible to switch to another tool, to add another output format, to reuse existing files in different documents (having a single source to maintain). I would propose XML hosted on SVN. Although the learning curve would be a bit stepper than with e.g. wiki markup it would give us the maximum flexibilty and a guaranteed future. Whatsmore, the existing documentation (speaking of almost 2000 pages!!) already uses XML. Apart from that, even if XML would be no choice at all, why using another tool apart from our wiki? What's wrong with en.opensuse.org (apart from the search ;-)) ? Plans to host the complete openSUSE documentation in a public SVN at berlios exist for quite some time, the structure is already in place, everything is prepared... .

... and get ppl to write...

That will be the hardest part. How many _regular contributors_ (not speaking of ppl doing administrative tasks) do we have in the wiki? -- Regards Frank Frank Sundermeyer, Technical Writer, Documentation SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg Tel: +49-911-74053-0, Fax: +49-911-7417755; http://www.opensuse.org/ SUSE Linux Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) "Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane" Dogbert -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-doc+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-doc+help@opensuse.org